Be extremely careful with Saved Messages ("Chosen") in Telegram

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Be extremely careful with Saved Messages ("Chosen") in Telegram - perhaps it is not them, but the account of scammers. How to protect yourself?



1 What happened?
Users of the Telegram messenger talked about a new way of deception: scammers disguise their accounts as Favorites (or Saved Messages in English localization) in order to intercept important notes. This method was told Telegram channel "Tusovka" and twitter user Ruslan Sharapov ... According to them, scammers on behalf of an account called Saved Messages write to users and immediately erase their messages. In the future, if one of these users decides to go to "Favorites" through the search, he will see a fake account in the output - and, possibly, send his note, message, photo or something else there.

Important update. After the release of this material, Telegram began block accounts who try to impersonate themselves as "Favorites". We still recommend that you read the last two sections of this article to see if it can help you keep your data safe.

2 So it turns out that the telegram was hacked?

Not! Strictly speaking, the scammers did not hack anything and do not intercept anything, they only take advantage of users' carelessness and the peculiarity of Telegram itself, which considers the Favorites folder to be the same dialogue as everyone else (and does not prohibit the creation of accounts with the “name” Saved Messages).
Nevertheless, we consider it important to talk about this problem. Firstly, because many people use "Favorites" to save confidential information: tickets, documents, passwords and fragments of correspondence. Secondly, because it is not so difficult to defend against this.

3 So how do you defend yourself?

First. Be careful. It sounds corny, and yet: as you can see in the screenshot above, the fake Saved Messages account has an online mark - the real “Favorite” does not have it either in the search results or in the dialogue itself. In addition, if you have enabled the Russian language of the telegram interface, then "Favorites" cannot be called Saved Messages in any way - and vice versa, there cannot be "Favorites" in the English-language interface.
Second. Pin Favorites to the dialog list. If you use this function often but are afraid to make mistakes, fasten her in the chat list - so she will always be at hand. If you don't want to do this, remember that you can always get to the real Favorites through the Telegram settings: for example, in the iOS version of the application, this button is located right under the username, and on Android and in Telegram Desktop for macOS, in the side menu , which is called by the "sandwich" button.

See the icon next to the avatar? There is a real "Favorites"
Third. Think again what you store in the Chosen One. Undoubtedly, this is a very convenient mechanism to keep important information close at hand - and have access to it from all your devices. Telegram itself even advises create private channels by which you can sort different types of data. But remember: if someone can hack your account, he will have access not only to correspondence (except for secret chats), but also to everything that was in the "Chosen One". How much will you regret that the contents of this folder ended up in the wrong hands?

4 And where, then, should all this be stored?

For logins, personal data and copies of documents, it is better to use password managers (for example, 1Password or KeePass). And for your candid photos - if you don't want outsiders to see them - find a place without cloud synchronization, password access and data encryption (for example, an external drive and VeraCrypt software). Or not store them at all.

Sultan Suleimanov