I’m just starting with Telegram bot development and have some privacy questions.
When I add my bot to a group chat, I’m wondering what kind of member information it can actually see. Can it get details about people in the group even if they haven’t interacted with the bot directly?
I’ve heard about privacy mode settings but I’m not sure how they work. Regardless of whether privacy mode is enabled or disabled, what user data does the bot receive when someone sends a message? Does it get their full profile info, username, phone number, or just basic stuff like their display name?
I want to make sure I understand the privacy implications before deploying my bot to group chats.
You need to enable privacy mode before going live. With privacy mode activated, your bot only receives messages sent directly to it or commands. If you turn it off, the bot can access everything in the group chat, but it still collects only basic information — user ID, display name, and username if it’s public. From my experience while building my bot, Telegram’s API does not provide private information like phone numbers or profile pictures unless users explicitly share them. Additionally, you’ll receive message timestamps and IDs, but nothing that wasn’t already visible in the group chat.
You should definitely set up privacy mode through BotFather before going live. When it’s off, your bot sees every group message and grabs sender info like user ID, first/last name, and username if it’s public. It can’t get phone numbers or profile pics though, and won’t see data from users who haven’t chatted. Your bot also gets message stuff like timestamps and reply chains. Here’s what most devs miss: bots can’t pull member lists or see old messages from before they joined the group. It only accesses data from people actually talking, so lurkers stay protected.
hey sarah! so yeah, ur bot can see user id, first name, and username (if it’s set). but no phone numbers or sensitive stuff. if privacy mode is on, it won’t catch messages unless tagged. overall, its pretty secure, don’t worry!