Forgive me if I’m being dense, but I’m having some trouble following what is actually private here. If I create a telegram account, it requires me to enter my phone number. I decline to sync my contacts with the app, so my phone contacts and the app contacts are not associated. Checking the privacy settings, I can set my phone number visibility to “nobody” and then “contacts” is the only option for “who can find me by my number”.

Where is the dividing line here? Do other users who have synced their phone contacts with the app have the ability to find me by my phone number even though I have not linked my contacts? Or does my not linking my contacts put up a wall that then makes me unsearchable? I do not want anyone who has my phone number written on a scrap of paper somewhere to be able to look me up on Telegram, I want to control access to my own contacts but I am not sure that’s possible based on descriptions of privacy settings in the app.