«Account deletion in 24 hours»: new scam in Telegram

A new scheme of account theft has appeared in the messenger. A notification arrives in private messages stating that an application for full account deletion has allegedly been received from them. Inside the chat, everything is designed as if the technical support of Telegram is writing it: there is an official logo on the avatar, a blue checkmark next to it, and a big button «Cancel deletion» at the bottom. To increase panic, scammers add a timer — for example, 24 hours to cancel the deletion. 

The user is afraid of losing their correspondences and contacts, so they quickly press the button and follow the link. There they are asked to enter a phone number and a code that arrives in SMS or inside the application. As soon as the user enters these numbers, they give the keys to their account to the scammers themselves. Scammers immediately log into the profile, throw out the real owner from all devices and completely take everything under their control. 

Saving your account from such theft is easy if you are attentive and know two simple rules: 

• Look at the status under the name. The real Telegram support service never has the status «last seen recently» under the name. 

Rules of the messenger itself. Telegram never sends warnings about a submitted deletion application. The profile is deleted either on the initiative of the owner, or automatically if the user does not open the application for several months in a row. No intermediate notifications with cancel buttons exist.