While not illegal, basically nothing I would do on Telegram is something I would want associated with my IRL phone number, lol. Of course, Telegram is very much set up to prevent the creation of an account without a phone number, even though they have a desktop client.
The closest I’ve got is those websites that let you receive texts to a phone number, but if they work at all, the free ones have already been used to make telegram accounts. It’s frustrating because basically every other website/social media account that exists, I’ve been able to sign up with a free anonymous burner email or something if I really wanted to. I don’t like to basically give out my doxx if it’s not for official business/family stuff.
Those of you who use Telegram, are you just all using your real phone number? Are you spending money on burner phones or premium SMS websites?
You could probably use a service like Crypton.sh to get a phone number to attach to Telegram, while not linking it to your actual identity. I’ve used this method for various sites which require phone verification.