Telegram is well known for bringing plenty of new features to the table ahead of its competitors, such as multiple account support, channels, and more.
The company has now announced a new feature that lets users sign up for a Telegram account without the need of a SIM card. This new feature comes a few weeks after Telegram put up unique usernames on the auction on the TON blockchain.
How Does The New Telegram Feature Work?
Telegram is now putting anonymous numbers up for bidding and these numbers can be used to sign up for Telegram without needing any SIM card.
Just like the unique username auction, you can buy these virtual numbers on Fragment, which is a site specially created for Telegram-related auctions.
To buy a number, you will have to link your TON wallet (Tonkeeper) to the website.
As of the time of writing this article, you can buy a random number for as low as 9 toncoins, which is equivalent to roughly $16.50. Some of the premium virtual numbers such as +888-8-888 are selling for 31,500 toncoins, roughly $58,200.
It should be noted that you can only use this number to sign up for Telegram. You can’t use it to receive SMS or calls or use it to register for another service.
This is a pretty cool feature if you happen to be a privacy conscious users and wouldn’t want to tie your existing number to Telegram.
What Else Is New On The App?
Apart from the anonymous login feature, you’ll also get an auto-delete functionality for all new chats, improved group topic functionality, an “aggressive anti-spam” mode for groups, and the ability to generate a temporary QR code so people can add you without a username or phone number.
Telegram is also introducing a number of emoji-related improvements, including emoji search on iOS, more custom emoji for Premium users, and more interactive emoji.
Finally, the company confirmed that the storage usage page on the Android app has been updated to match the iOS version. This means you can view chat storage usage and delete entire types of media from a chat (e.g. deleting all videos in a chat).
