"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."

~ Harry Potter Universe

Uses Telethon library to check online status and if it was changed. If changes are detected, a bot will send you a message.

The spy.py will host a bot that you can interact with. On Telegram you chat with the bot and through the bot commands you add/remove users on the monitoring list.

The bot will message you, if any of the users on the list changed their online status.

pip install telethon

Create your telegramm application on https://my.telegram.org/apps and replace API_HASH, API_ID with yours.

API_HASH = 'your api hash'
API_ID = 'yuor api id'
BOT_TOKEN = "your bot token"
USER_NAME = "your user name"

Create bot in your telegram client (write a message to @BotFather) and copy bot token into app.

python3 spy.py

Then input your telegram account number which will be sending requests to get users online status. Do not enter a bot token as this will not work.

Input code in console from telegram.

Write /help to your bot to see usage information.

/start - start online monitoring 
/stop - stop online monitoring 
/help - show help 
/add - add user to monitoring list "/add +79991234567 UserName"
/list - show added users
/clear - clear user list
/remove - remove user from list with position in list (to show use /list command)"/remove 1"
/setdelay - set delay between user check in seconds
/logs - display command log
/clearlogs - clear the command log file
/cleardata - reset configuration
/disconnect - disconnect bot
/getall - status

Handy cronjob makros

• start background process:

#!/bin/bash cd /home/DIRECTORY/TelegramOnlineSpy nohup python3 spy.py > nohupper.log &

• check if background process is still running

#!/bin/bash
cd /home/DIRECTORY/TelegramOnlineSpy
minimum_finds=2
found=$(ps aux | grep "python3 spy.py" | wc -l)
if ((found < minimum_finds)); then
   # DO SOMETHING WHEN YOUR SPY IS OFFLINE
   # eg. alert the user or restart the spy
fi

check if spy is running every hour

32 * * * * /home/DIRECTORY/TelegramOnlineSpy/checkrunning.sh