Someone sent you a proxy link, in a channel, from a bot or a friend in a private chat. You tapped it, Telegram came back to life, your chats are loading. Then in the evening you run into a headline saying your data is already sitting in files kept by hackers and foreign spies, and it gets a bit uncomfortable: who actually runs this server, and what do they know about you?

Let me say this up front: we run a proxy server ourselves and sell personal proxies. So we are exactly the kind of server owner this text is about, and you have every right to read on with that in mind. That's why I'll lean on Telegram's own help pages and on the code of the official server, and I'll talk about us only at the very end. If you'd like to understand first how a proxy works in general, we have a separate guide.

Can the proxy owner read your messages

This is the fear people usually start with: the proxy admin will find out who you talk to, or even read the messages themselves. Reading them is exactly what they can't do. Telegram encrypts everything you send and receive before the traffic reaches the proxy, and neither your internet provider, nor the owner of a Wi-Fi router, nor any other middleman can decrypt it if they intercept it. Telegram's proxy help page says plainly that the owner can't read your messages or identify your account: they don't see your username or your account ID. Your chat list and what you do in Telegram (who you write to, which channels you scroll through) are off limits to them as well.

They can't swap a message on the way either. The app checks every message it receives and throws away anything that fails the check, so at worst a bad proxy won't deliver something, but the app won't accept a fake.

By the way, that same article with the scary headline says the same thing as Telegram further down. You just have to scroll that far.

What they can still see about you

Don't relax completely just yet, though. To pass your traffic through, the proxy accepts your connection, which means it sees the IP address the connection came from. It also sees when you connect and the simple fact that someone is using Telegram. Telegram doesn't hide this: the same help page says a dishonest owner can collect this information and can record your IP, because you are connecting to their server.

Telegram Desktop reminds you of this itself. Before it checks a server from a link for the first time, it shows a window saying "This will expose your IP address to the admin of the proxy server." and waits for you to agree, and once you have agreed it doesn't ask again. In early 2026 the same window appeared in Telegram for Android too, in the card that opens from a proxy link.

From an IP you can usually tell the internet provider and roughly the city, and for many people the address is dynamic anyway.

Whether the owner writes any of this down somewhere can't be checked from the outside, and this is where it gets interesting to look at the code. Telegram's MTProxy server is open source, so anyone can set up their own. The code of the official server shows that with default settings it doesn't log the address of every connection, and a client's address ends up in the log only on certain errors. But if the server is started with the -v flag, a line about every new connection goes into the log, with the IP and port. As a user you won't notice any difference. I'm talking only about the official server here: other implementations have their own rules, and what's switched on at a particular stranger's server I don't know, and you can't find out from the outside either.

There's a smaller detail too. The open header of every Telegram packet carries the number of the key that protects a particular device's connection. From it the proxy owner can tell that the same device has come back, even if its IP has changed. Whose device it is, they still won't learn.

What's worth fearing more than the proxy itself

The risks that can really cost you your account usually live next to the proxy. A bot that "hands out proxies from Telegram", an app "for proxies", some helper offering to set things up: quite often, at some point, they ask for your login code. Telegram is firm about this: the code must never be shared with anyone, including other services and apps. And it advises treating bots as strangers and not giving them passwords, Telegram codes or bank account numbers, even if they ask nicely.

After you connect to an MTProto proxy, an unfamiliar channel may appear in your chat list. The proxy owner promotes it to cover server costs, and Telegram allows this. When you add such a proxy, Desktop says it openly: "This proxy may display a sponsored channel in your chat list. This doesn't reveal any of your Telegram traffic." The channel doesn't touch your messages, but it was chosen by the proxy owner, not by Telegram, so treat its links and bots like any ad from a stranger.

While you're at it, look at the proxy list in your settings. If old addresses from years ago are still sitting there and auto-switching is on, Telegram will move to the next proxy on the list by itself when the current one drops, and you'll end up on a server whose owner you stopped thinking about long ago.

WEB proxies in Telegram Desktop are a story of their own. While you're connected, one runs its provider's web page in the background, and Desktop warns: "This WEB proxy runs a web page from its provider in the background while you're connected. Only use it if you trust the provider." I'm keeping an eye on this type for now, but in no hurry.

How to decide whether to keep your proxy

Telegram's advice is simple: only use proxies from a source you trust, or ask a friend to set one up for you. I agree with it. Since no proxy owner can read your messages and every one of them sees your IP, what you're really choosing is not the proxy but the person behind it. With a free link from a channel there's usually nothing to check, because you don't know who runs the server and there's no one to ask. A friend who set up the server themselves, or a service with a website you can write to, is a different conversation.

I'd start with the source myself, and do the rest of the list with any proxy:

  1. Remember where you got the link, and decide by the source whether to keep the proxy or change it.
  2. Delete the proxies you don't recognise from the list.
  3. For important conversations, start a secret chat: open the other person's profile, tap "…" and choose Start Secret Chat. Only you and the other person can read it, not even Telegram can, it is always one on one, and it lives only on the device where you started it.
  4. Under Settings → Privacy and Security, turn on two-step verification (a cloud password) and a passcode for the app itself.
  5. Open the list of active sessions (Settings → Devices) and end the ones you don't recognise.
  6. Enter your login code only in Telegram itself, nowhere else.

All of this protects your account whatever proxy you use. Neither a proxy nor encryption will save you from someone who has picked up your unlocked phone, and Telegram says so plainly in its help.

And how this works with us, since we're an owner too

FreeGate gives you a personal MTProto proxy, and we can't see your messages for exactly the reason described above. Telegram encrypts messages before they reach the proxy, we have no keys to decrypt them, and we only pass the data on. That's no credit to us: it's how Telegram works, and it's the same with any proxy owner.

To the question "who runs it" we answer with things you can check. Each of your devices has its own link, and if it leaks, you change it in your account with one tap, and the old one stops working at once. Sign-up needs only an email, no phone number. The proxy works only inside Telegram, in the official apps for iOS, Android, Windows, macOS and Linux, while your browser, your banking app and your other apps go online directly. Telegram Web doesn't support proxies.

You can try it for free: 1 day after you sign up with your email and confirm the address, no payment. After that the Base plan is $1.00 for 30 days and Optimal is $2.50 for 90 days, and that's the price per device, so a phone and a laptop count separately (choose 2 when buying). You pay from your account balance, which for now is topped up via support, and there are no automatic charges. It's all at freegate.app/world.

And if you stay on a proxy from a friend, that's fine too. What matters is that you know who runs it.