Introduction
On March 27, 2025, Telegram faced a massive privacy controversy as a bot named ​Funstatgrtbot was revealed to have scraped ​56 billion messages from ​860 million users across 36 million public groups and channels. This incident highlights critical risks in public chat platforms and raises urgent questions about data security in decentralized ecosystems.

How Funstatgrtbot Compromised Telegram’s Public Chats
The bot systematically indexed ​6 years of public Telegram data (dating back to 2019), creating detailed user profiles that include:

• ​Membership histories: Lists of joined groups/subscribed channels
• ​Activity patterns: Peak usage times and frequency of interactions
• ​Social graphs: Relationships between users based on shared groups
  While it currently avoids displaying exact message content, the bot’s dataset could enable targeted advertising or identity tracing if sold.

Why This Isn’t Just a “Privacy Non-Issue”​
Although Telegram claims public group data is inherently non-private, Funstatgrtbot’s scale exposes systemic risks:

• ​360 million+ inactive users had historical data harvested without consent
• ​Metadata analysis can infer sensitive details (e.g., political views via group memberships)
• Precedent from Discord’s 2024 scraping incident shows how such data fuels spam and phishing.

User Protection Measures: What Telegram Can Learn
To prevent future exploitation, experts recommend:

1. ​Rate-limiting bots: Restricting automated data collection
2. ​Opt-out mechanisms: Letting users exclude profiles from indexing
3. ​Behavioral fingerprinting: Detecting bulk scraping patterns
   Telegram’s delayed response contrasts with Discord’s proactive anti-scraping protocols post-2024 breach.

Conclusion
The Funstatgrtbot scandal underscores the paradox of “public” data in messaging apps. While Telegram maintains this isn’t a security flaw, the bot’s ability to aggregate 56 billion messages demands urgent reforms in transparency and user control.