Check whether phone numbers or usernames belong to Telegram accounts

These helpers port the functionality of bellingcat's telegram-phone-number-checker Python tool to R. They use the currently authenticated [TelegramClient] to look up users by phone number (via `ImportContactsRequest` / `DeleteContactsRequest`) or by username (via `client$get_entity()`), and return the public profile fields Telegram returns about the matched user.

Details

Phone-number lookups briefly add the number to your contact list and then delete it. Telegram throttles abusive callers — Bellingcat recommends using a fresh, residential-IP account rather than a personal one.

Value

A named list of user profile fields, or a list with an error field if the lookup failed.

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
client <- TelegramClient$new("my_session", api_id = 123, api_hash = "abc")
client$connect()
check_phone_on_telegram(client, "+15551234567")
} # }