Telegram account theft: what you need to know about it
For today Telegram — one of the most popular instant messengers in the world. It attracts the attention of users with its reliability, wide functionality in the process of exchanging messages, multimedia content, video calls, etc. On this platform, you can create separate channels and groups for distributing information content, offering goods, services, and even ordinary communication.
As the messenger became more and more popular, it began to interest not only business representatives and ordinary users, but also not particularly trustworthy people. Thus, cases have become increasingly common when attackers tried to gain access to user accounts. Most often, unscrupulous individuals are interested in promoted accounts that can be used to collect personal information about people who connect to them. Telegram accounts are often hacked in order to send mass messages to connected users asking for financial assistance, supposedly on behalf of the owner, etc. There are quite a lot of situations where Telegram accounts fall victim to attackers. Are there ways to prevent this from happening?
Now let's look in more detail at what tricks unscrupulous individuals resort to in order to hijack Telegram account. Here are a number of recommendations that you can use to ensure a fairly high level of protection against theft. Let us describe a number of signs that will indicate that the attackers managed to steal your Telegram account. Information about the features of restoring access to a lost account will also be useful. Finally, we will provide a number of recommendations that will allow you to ensure a high level of security for your online work without restrictions and associated risks. But, first things first.
Popular ways to steal a Telegram account
Telegram account hijacking can be carried out by attackers in different ways. Here is a selection of the most popular solutions:
- Fishing. It is to him that most of the attackers who hunt for Telegram accounts run up to him. The essence of phishing is quite simple: initially the attacker sends a link to any third-party message, externally designed as an official page from the Telegram messenger or related service. In order to read it to you, you need to enter a phone number or a confirmation code that will arrive via SMS or via Telegram. It is precisely these actions that the attackers expect from you. As soon as you fulfill these requirements, the hacker will have access to your personal page and can then do whatever he wants with it. And believe me, studying your correspondence or deleting contacts — this is the minimum harm it can cause. It is much worse if he sends messages to your contacts on your behalf with a request to transfer him money or perform some other action.
- Inserting malicious software onto your device. In this case, it is assumed that an application containing malicious code will get onto your computer or laptop, tablet, or smartphone. For the most part, you will not even know that such a program is on your device and you will work in your usual mode. But the software itself will intercept all your data and passwords at this time, monitor your online activity, record the most frequent combinations of keys pressed, and also perform other actions that will subsequently allow you to simulate your real work with Telegram. Moreover, they can give a hacker remote access to your computer or smartphone. What will happen next? Changing your login, password, phone number and other actions that will simply block your access to your own account.
- Sim swapping. This method of hacking Telegram accounts is more difficult to implement. And in terms of the potential danger that will be caused to you, it will be significantly higher than that of phishing. In this case, the hacker’s goal will be to gain access to your SIM card or its duplicate. How to implement this? Unfortunately, attackers have a lot of different tricks at their disposal. As an example, they can fake your identity, hack the database of your cellular operator, bribe one of the employees of the cellular network operator, etc. There are quite a lot of sophistications here, but the result is the same — gaining control of your SIM card. Now an attacker can intercept SMS messages with unique codes that the system will send to you to confirm login to your Telegram page and related services. Then all you have to do is change the phone number associated with your account and that’s it — you have lost access to it.
More information about the concept of brute account can be read here.
What methods of protection against theft of a Telegram account are there?
The expression “forewarned is forearmed” works great in this case too. That is, every telegram user must be aware of all the risks that exist in this process, and also understand how he can resist them. You can significantly increase the resistance of your personal pages to theft if you follow a number of recommendations in the workflow:
- Never open suspicious links. Also, you should not enter personal data, even a phone number, on sites that are unknown to you. If you receive a similar message, including one with a link from a sender who claims to be a representative of the Telegram messenger or one of the related services, do not rush to open it, follow all the links or enter personal information. Leave such messages unread.
- Regularly monitor the condition of your SIM card. Under no circumstances should you provide it to third parties, even those whose reliability you do not deeply doubt. If you have lost your SIM card, you should immediately contact your operator with a request to block it. But if it has already happened that your SIM card does not work, if your phone number has changed, then this is a reason to contact your telecom operator with a request to check the status of the card. Also, at the first sign of problems with the SIM card, it is advisable to link your Telegram account to another phone number. You can do this in literally a couple of minutes in the messenger settings.
- Update your software regularly. The fact is that not only hackers and attackers are developing, but also services that work to increase the level of security of software products. That is, as soon as any threat from an attacker appears, work immediately begins to create solutions that will prevent this from happening. And this is being implemented in the new version of the software. That is, the more often you update your Telegram, the higher level of protection you will automatically have against current threats. This is one of the easiest ways to protect yourself from various types of vulnerabilities and malicious software.
- Use two-factor authentication. A similar solution is already offered by many services today, including Telegram. It's about providing an extra layer of protection. Here, along with entering the confirmation code from your devices, you will also need to enter the password that you set in your settings. Literally a couple of extra seconds of time, but a much higher level of safety and protection. Enabling two-factor authentication is quite simple. To do this, you need to go to the “Settings” menu. Telegram, find the “Privacy and Security” option in it. From the drop-down list, select the “Two-factor authentication” item. In the window that opens, enter your password and confirm it. In case you forget the entered word and need to restore it later, you can additionally set your email. This is where your password will be sent if you lose it.
- Use two-factor authentication. A similar solution is already offered by many services today, including Telegram. It's about providing an extra layer of protection. Here, along with entering the confirmation code from your devices, you will also need to enter the password that you set in your settings. Literally a couple of extra seconds of time, but a much higher level of safety and protection. Enabling two-factor authentication is quite simple. To do this, you need to go to the “Settings” menu. Telegram, find the “Privacy and Security” option in it. From the drop-down list, select the “Two-factor authentication” item. In the window that opens, enter your password and confirm it. In case you forget the entered word and need to restore it later, you can additionally set your email. This is where your password will be sent if you lose it.
- Use a secure connection when working with Telegram. This is relevant for those who work with the messenger on a computer or laptop. One of the best solutions for providing this — additional use of mobile proxies. Such intermediary servers will reliably hide your IP-address and geolocation. This is a guarantee that attackers simply will not gain access to your devices and will not be able to intercept traffic. If you use a massager on your phone, then never connect to open Wi-Fi networks. It would also be a good idea to enable the “Use proxy” mode. in the Telegram settings on your smartphone. There is only one point that is worth considering here — this is the reliability of the services used. The security and stability of your work on the Internet largely depends on them.
How to understand that your Telegram account has been hacked?
Above, when considering ways to hack a Telegram account, we already said that there are methods of hacker attacks that you, as a user, may not even be aware of. It’s one thing if you simply cannot access your personal page using a password or phone number. Of course, such a phenomenon will clearly make you think that your account has been hijacked. This occurs if a hacker manually changed your data or linked the page to another phone number. But there are still a number of less obvious signs that will indicate the hijacking of a Telegram account. If you are more attentive, you can easily notice them:
- Activity on your personal telegram page has increased sharply. You should be wary of such phenomena as sending or receiving messages from contacts unfamiliar to you, changing your avatar or name, and the appearance of channels in your feed that you have not subscribed to. Also, hacking may be indicated by the presence of new contacts in the group or the deletion of those you had.
- You began to receive SMS messages containing confirmation codes to access your Telegram page. But at the same time you clearly understand that you did not request them. This means that third-party actions are taking place and someone is trying to gain access to your account.
- You began to receive messages from your friends or those who subscribe to your Telegram account, saying that they received an incomprehensible message from you or links. It may well be that an attacker hacked your page in order to distribute spam among your subscribers, malicious software or fishing.
Just one of these signs should make you move as quickly as possible and take measures to protect your own data and get your hacked account back. Here's how to do this, we'll study further.
Ways to restore access to a hacked Telegram account
If it happens that your Telegram account was hacked, then this is not a reason to panic, you can try to restore access to it again. To do this, you can use one of the following methods:
- Use your email to reset your password. You can use this method only if you used two-factor authentication and specified your email address when connecting it. In this case, you can go to the official Telegram website or its application and send a request to reset your password from here; as a result, you will receive an email containing a link. If you click on it, you can reset all your account settings. This means that all the parameters that the attacker set after hacking your page will not be relevant. All you have to do is set a new password and that’s it — the account is yours again. But we would like to draw your attention to the fact that the password reset link you receive will only be valid for 1 hour.
- Contact the messenger technical support service. If you did not specify an email or you currently do not have the opportunity to use it, you can contact the messenger technical support service directly on their official website or through the chat bot. Only in this case will you need to provide proof of your identity and that the hacked account is really yours. In this case, we are talking about the user name, the date when the Telegram account was registered, last contacts, as well as confirmation of your identity. Technical support specialists will review the request and if all the data matches, they will return access to your account.
- Take help from your friends or subscribers from your hacked account. In the event that you cannot provide all the information requested by technical support specialists, you can ask your subscribers to confirm your identity and that this account belongs directly to you. What will be required of them? Just write a message to the chatbot indicating your phone number or name directly. In response to such a request, a confirmation code will be sent to them, and they will forward it to you. With its help, you can then go to your Telegram page.
Regardless of which method of restoring access to a hacked account you choose, your first action after gaining control — change both the password and the confirmation code. Also take a look at the “Privacy and Security” settings section. and set up two-factor authentication to increase security. All suspicious links and messages that you find on the page must be deleted. This also applies to those that were sent allegedly on your behalf. You should also notify all contacts that your account has been hacked. Due to this, they will not perform the actions that the attacker expected.
To summarize
Despite the fact that Telegram is one of the most secure messengers today, accounts on it are still susceptible to hacking. And the fact that next time you may become a target for attackers — quite possible. Above we have given a number of recommendations that you can use to increase your own level of security when working with the Telegram messenger. Don’t neglect them, and you will greatly increase the stability of your work and minimize all kinds of risks.
We advise you to pay special attention to the last point, which involves the additional organization of anonymous interaction with the Internet through a mobile proxy. In this case, you provide yourself with guaranteed confidentiality and security of your online work. Additional functionality of using mobile proxies in practice also includes bypassing regional blocks to gain access to sites from any region and country of the world, multi-accounting, as well as the ability to use programs that automate your actions. With such a reliable assistant, you can take the promotion of your Telegram account to a new level. Moreover, you can simultaneously work on several personal pages, effectively promoting your brand, products or services through a popular messenger.
All that remains is to find a reliable solution. But this is not a problem, since there is a service called MobileProxy.Space. In this case, you get functional mobile proxies for working with Telegram and not only at reasonable and reasonable prices. Follow the link https://mobileproxy.space/user.html?buyproxy to learn more about the offers available in geolocations , current tariffs. You also have the opportunity to take advantage of a completely free two-hour test to make sure that these mobile proxies fully satisfy your needs. There is also a 24-hour technical support service at your service, which will quickly respond to customer requests, solving problems and providing competent advice.