Privacy Policy

Last updated 29 August 2026.

Who we are

TGDirectory is a public directory of Telegram channels, groups and bots. This policy explains what we store about you and why.

What we collect

Account data. When you register we store your email address, your name if you provide one, and a cryptographic hash of your password. We never store your password itself and cannot recover it.

Channel submissions. If you submit a channel we store the Telegram link, the category, language and description you provide, and the public information Telegram returns for that channel. Submitting does not require an account. If you are signed in, the submission is linked to your account; if you are not, it is stored with no submitter, and nothing about you is recorded with it.

Messages you send us. The contact form stores the name, email address, subject and message you submit so we can reply.

Payments. Paid Featured placements are processed by Heleket. We never see or store your card details, wallet keys or crypto credentials. We store the payment identifier, amount, status and dates that Heleket reports back to us so we know which placement was paid for. A placement can be bought without an account, in which case the payment record has no user attached to it and Heleket holds the payer's details.

Technical data. We record IP addresses briefly for rate limiting, to stop abuse of the login, registration and submission endpoints. We keep an internal audit log of administrative actions taken on the directory.

The visitor count. The number in the header is a count of distinct visitors in the last twenty-four hours. To count you once rather than once per page, we store a one-way cryptographic hash of your IP address and browser user-agent, combined with a secret key, together with the time you were last seen. We do not store your IP address itself, and the hash cannot be reversed to recover it. We record nothing else — not the page you are on, not where you came from, not what you searched for. The row is deleted once it is more than twenty-four hours old, which is the same period the number covers: nothing is kept beyond the figure it feeds, so this is a running count and not a history of who visited. The same rows give the smaller “here right now” figure shown in the tooltip, which counts the last five minutes.

Cookies

We set a session cookie when you log in, so that you stay logged in between pages. It is required for the site to work and is not used for advertising.

If you submit a channel without an account, we set one further cookie recording which submissions came from this browser, so that creating an account afterwards can attach them to it. It holds only those identifiers, is signed so it cannot be edited, cannot be read by scripts, and expires after seven days. Nothing is sent to anyone else.

We do not use third-party analytics or advertising trackers.

Why we can use your data

We process account, submission and payment data to provide the service you asked for. We process technical data because we have a legitimate interest in keeping the site secure and available.

Who we share it with

We do not sell your personal data. We share it only with the providers required to run the service: Vercel for hosting, Neon for the database, Bird for transactional email such as verification links, and Heleket for payment processing.

Note that anything you publish through the directory — a channel listing and its description — is public by design and visible to anyone.

How long we keep it

Account and channel data is kept while your account exists. Contact messages and payment records are kept while we need them for support and accounting. Rate-limiting records expire within hours. The hashes behind the visitor count are deleted once they are more than twenty-four hours old, and nothing is retained about a visit after that. The anonymous-submission cookie expires after seven days.

Your rights

You can ask us for a copy of your data, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete your account and its listings. Contact us and we will action it. Depending on where you live you may also have the right to complain to a data protection regulator.

Children

This service is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 13.

Changes

If we change this policy we will update the date at the top of this page.

Contact

Questions about this policy, or a request about your data, can be sent through our contact form.