Five minutes on these five settings noticeably improves account safety:
- Phone number: Settings → Privacy → Phone Number → My Contacts or Nobody;
- Last seen: set visibility on the same screen and add exceptions;
- Forwarding: choose where forwarded messages link back to;
- Two-step verification: set a cloud password and a recovery email;
- Devices: review the session list and terminate anything unfamiliar.
For sensitive conversations use Secret Chats: end-to-end encrypted and never synced to the cloud.