New Telegram Unsend Feature Lets You Delete Messages From Both Parties

Months after Facebook rolled out the promised Messenger “Unsend” feature, rival chat app Telegram comes with an even better announcement.

The new Telegram Unsend feature scrubs clean not just your inbox but that of the person you were chatting with. As you probably know by now, Telegram only had an Unsend that worked for 48 hours and deleted the messages you send.

With the Telegram 5.5 update, you can delete messages you sent and received from both yours and your chat partner’s app, forever. In groups, you can delete messages of any member you choose, anytime.

Once gone, you won’t be able to access those messages again, which is a privacy feature no other popular app offers.

“Today, we are giving hundreds of millions of users complete control of any private conversation they have ever had. You can now choose to delete any message you have sent or received from both sides in any private chat. The messages will disappear for both you and the other person – without leaving a trace,” says Telegram.

On Twitter, multiple users were not happy with the update, saying that the ability to delete other people’s messages has the potential to be abused and it will lead to a lack of trust between users.

Giving other people control over my data and calling that "privacy" is absurd. Nobody should have the right to rewrite history, especially not the history of others.

— Kevin Vinck (@KalenXI) March 25, 2019

Telegram argued this bidirectional deleting was better than the unidirectional one, since you don’t risk taking things out of context, with only one part of the conversation visible.

Another new feature in Telegram is Anonymous Forwarding, which will conceal your name if a friend forwards a message from you to a third party.

Also read: ✍Facebook Currently Testing Dark Mode Feature To Messenger App: Here’s How To Access It✍