I deleted telegram long ago, but not my account, just the apps.

As of recent, I wanted to log back in and actually delete my phone number from there, so there's no more association.

I can't login. I download the app, and it sends a verification code through Telegram and won't do SMS, but I'm not logged in at all so I can't get the code.

I'm stuck there. I contacted support and they're yet to respond. :p

Also, these days telegram is really at the state of a pile of garbage, bloated, buggy, and shady messenger.

Every messenger is.

I will probably up this one, it's really a lot of materials, and articles, and news if you read behind all this war and politics stuff

You should really search, I tried to compile all I could find, but I'm here to stop using tg, not going back to tg and scroll Russian opposition channels for all the mentions of stuff like that

There are some articles in English that describe the events, but most of them are in Russian

Also, from the search it's really hard to find anything because a lot of stuff about the war

Here are a few topics:

1. Telegram leaking location
2. Telegram leaking IP address
3. Deleted many years ago chats/messages were recovered remotely (just recently)
4. Telegram is delaying source code publishing
5. The source code's build has a different hash and a few mb smaller than the release
6. Their data sharing reports are empty although they were openly giving data to authorities in e.g. Germany

Compilation of different technical vulnerabilities and issues of telegram(in Russian):

• https://habr.com/ru/articles/206900/
• https://habr.com/ru/articles/252911/
• https://xakep.ru/2018/10/31/telegram-plain-text-chats/
• https://habr.com/ru/articles/460655/
• https://habr.com/ru/articles/744316/

And in general, Russian government unbanned tg after it realized it can read it. I wouldn't trust anything that was unbanned in Russia or China

And one more article that lists issues of telegram: https://emisare.medium.com/так-ли-безопасен-telegram-f5a3128a1311

I'm already tired of doing this, I didn't even start on activists and how they get hacked and stuff

A lot of speculation that does end with this in the article:

"After discussing her case with experts, Matsapulina now believes her Telegram messages may have been compromised by a form of spyware. When she was told that a hacking device would need to be physically nearby to infiltrate her phone, a memory resurfaced: At times before her arrest, she had noticed an unmarked truck with a dome on its roof parked outside her building. She had even jokingly mentioned it to friends on Telegram. Now, she remembered, as the police were banging on her door that morning, she’d spotted the same mystery vehicle parked outside. By the time the police stormed her home, the vehicle was gone.

Matsapulina has since started using Telegram again."

Most messaging apps are vulnerable on the client side with spyware, no matter what E2EE exists along the way.

Russian authorities usually just hijack login sms confirmation codes. This is a common practice in Russia. Not denying that something else shady might be going on, but I do know mobile providers there don't even bother to ask why - they just provide shit on demand.

I have been living under a rock, what happened to Telegram?

Nobody in this entire thread of FUD has posted a single link to support any claim of Russian data intrusion.