Privacy Policy

Last updated: 20 October 2026

HelpCenter lets owners of Telegram channels, groups and shops create their own AI help bot through @HelpCenterBot. The help bot answers members' questions from the owner's FAQ and passes the questions it can't answer to the owner. This page explains what we store, why, for how long, and how to delete it. HelpCenter is not affiliated with Telegram.

In short

We store as little as we can. We don't store owners' names.
Questions, answers, FAQs and bot tokens are encrypted in our database.
Questions are answered by an AI provider, DeepSeek, which receives the FAQ and the question.
Questions are deleted after 90 days. You can delete your data any time with one command.
We don't sell your data, show ads, or use your messages to train AI.

1. Who is responsible

HelpCenter is an independent project. For the data of owners (people who use @HelpCenterBot), HelpCenter is responsible. Each help bot is run by its owner for their community: the owner decides to use it and writes its FAQ, and HelpCenter runs the bot for them. If you are a member writing to a help bot, you can contact that community's owner, or us.

Contact: send /feedback to @HelpCenterBot.

2. If you own a help bot

What we store	Why	How long
Your Telegram user ID and the language you chose	To run your account and show menus in your language	Until you delete your data
How you found us (the link code you started with, e.g. `?start=post_oct20`)	To know which promotions work	Until you delete your data
Your help bot: its ID, username, name and access token (token encrypted)	To run the bot	Until you delete it, or 30 days after the bot stops working
The community you linked: its ID, title and public username	To name the bot and its welcome message	As long as the bot
Your FAQ (encrypted)	So the bot can answer from it	As long as the bot
Activity events, e.g. "created a bot", "saved FAQ", "sent feedback", "wants Pro", with time and IDs	Product statistics and abuse prevention	400 days

Your name. We don't store your name or @username. When the HelpCenter team looks at the list of help bots, it is fetched live from Telegram (as Telegram shows it to any bot you've started) and not saved.

FAQ import. If you send posts, text or a file to build your FAQ, we send that text to our AI provider to draft questions and answers. The text and the draft are kept only in the server's memory until you save or discard the draft (at most a day, or until the server restarts); only the FAQ you save is stored.

Profile photo. If you choose a profile photo for your help bot (for example your channel's photo), we pass it to Telegram to set it and don't keep a copy.

Feedback. When you use /feedback, your message (and your Telegram name and @username, as Telegram shows them) is delivered to the HelpCenter team's Telegram accounts, and stays in those Telegram chats. Our database keeps only the message IDs needed to route replies, for 90 days.

Pro list. If you tap "I want Pro", we keep your Telegram ID, the date, where you tapped it and the founding price you were promised, so we can tell you in @HelpCenterBot when Pro is ready and give you that price. This stays until you delete your data (which also removes you from the list). The HelpCenter team gets a note in Telegram with your Telegram name and @username, as Telegram shows them. No payment details are collected.

3. If you write to a help bot

What we store	Why	How long
Your question and the bot's answer (encrypted), the language, and technical data (time, AI usage)	To answer, to limit abuse (daily question limit), and to show the owner statistics	90 days
If the bot couldn't answer: your question, your Telegram name and @username (encrypted), and the owner's reply	To pass the question to the owner and deliver their reply	90 days
Your Telegram user ID, language, first and last visit	To count members and apply limits	Deleted after 180 days without activity

When the bot can't answer, the owner receives a message in Telegram with your name, @username, language and question. That message stays in the owner's Telegram chat, which we don't control.

We also keep anonymous daily totals per bot (number of questions, answered, passed to the owner, AI cost). They contain no user IDs or text.

4. Who else receives data

DeepSeek (AI provider, China) receives the owner's FAQ and the member's question to write the answer, texts an owner sends to import a FAQ, and our fixed bot texts to translate them. It does not receive Telegram user IDs or names. DeepSeek processes the text on its servers in China under its own API terms. If you are in the EU, UK or another country with data-transfer rules, this means your question leaves your region. Please don't put passwords, card numbers or other sensitive details in questions or FAQs.
Telegram delivers all messages, as with any Telegram bot.
Hetzner Online hosts our server and database in Germany.
Cloudflare provides DNS for our domain and may deliver this website.

Reports and abuse. Anyone can report a help bot with /report in that bot. The report text, the bot and the reporter's Telegram ID are sent to the HelpCenter team's Telegram accounts. When a bot is reported or appears to break our Terms, we may read its FAQ to decide whether to suspend or remove it. If we ban an account for breaking the Terms, we keep its Telegram ID (and nothing else) even after the account deletes its data, so it can't create new help bots.

We don't sell data, share it with advertisers, or use messages to train AI models. We may disclose data if the law requires it.

5. Security

Questions, answers, FAQs, members' names and bot tokens are encrypted in the database, and the key is kept separately from it. Connections use HTTPS. The server accepts only key-based logins, and only the HelpCenter operator can access it. Server logs contain technical information (IDs, bot usernames, timings) but not message text, and they rotate automatically.

6. Backups

We back up the database every night and keep backups for 14 days. Data you delete disappears from backups within 14 days.

7. Deleting your data and your rights

Members: send /forgetme to the help bot. Your questions, answers and member record for that bot are deleted right away.
Owners: in @HelpCenterBot, open 🤖 My bots → your bot → 🗑 Delete bot data, or send /deletemydata to delete everything about you and your bots. Your bot itself stays yours in Telegram; it just stops answering.
To get a copy of your data, correct it, object to how we use it, or ask anything else, send /feedback to @HelpCenterBot. We answer within 30 days.
If you are in the EU or UK, you can also complain to your data protection authority.

8. Children

HelpCenter is not meant for children under 13. Owners must be at least 18.

9. Changes

If we change this policy, we update this page and its date. For important changes we also tell owners in @HelpCenterBot.