Secret Chats in Telegram messenger app is one of the main reasons for its growing popularity. Telegram claims that secret chats are way more secure than regular chats, and except the sender and the recipient, nobody can read the messages sent using the secret chats feature.
In Telegram, secret chats are not stored in the cloud like regular chats. Secret chats are stored only on the sender's and the recipient's devices. This further adds to its security as no other third party can access your secret chats in the cloud, though this also means you cannot access your secret chats from other devices.
Note: For installing Telegram app, see how to install and use Telegram on Android.
For extra security, you can even set a time limit after which the messages in your secret chats will be deleted from your device and your friend's device. (Self-destructing messages)
Let's start secret chats in Telegram for Android
Starting a secret chat in Telegram is easy. First, you need to select a contact with whom you want to chat. After selecting a contact, you will see the chat screen as shown below. Touch the profile photo at the top-right to open the Contact Info screen.
You can see Start Secret Chat at the bottom of the Contact Info screen as shown below. Touch Start Secret Chat.
In the next screen, you can see some information about the secret chats, and a message showing that Telegram is waiting for the contact to get online. If the contact with whom you want to do secret chat is online, Telegram will take you to the chat screen where you can chat secretly. Enter the text you want to send and touch the paper plane icon on the right side.
The image showing secret chats in Telegram.
How to set self-destucting time for secret chats in Android?
To enable self-destructing messages in secret chats, touch the stopwatch icon at the top to open the Self-Destruct Timer dialog window, then Chose the time limit for the self-destruct timer.
All messages sent inside secret chats will be deleted from both your device and your friend's device after the time limit. The timer for deleting a message starts after it is displayed on the recipients device. Remember, this time limit will not affect messages sent before setting the self-destruct timer. If you want to delete older messages, you will have to manually delete them.
