Are you looking to leave the Facebook private messaging app, WhatsApp?
You are not alone. After an update to the terms of service that now allows WhatsApp to share its data with its parent company, privacy-conscious users are looking for alternatives.
Enter the telegram.
Telegram has been around since 2013, but is currently having a moment. In the wake of the WhatsApp controversy, the company, which imposes itself as a privacy-focused service that offers secure individual messages as well as more social features such as group chats, shared that it gained 25 million users in a 72-hour period. mid-January. The service says it now has 500 million active users.
Telegram is often bundled with Signal, another messaging application popular with those looking for a secure messaging solution.
But what It’s Telegram? How does it compare to WhatsApp and Signal? And how much should you be concerned about the involvement of terrorists, extreme right-wing extremists and vendors of revenge pornography? Let’s take a look.
Who owns Telegram?
Telegram belongs to the same two people who founded the company in Russia in 2013, Pavel Durov and his brother Nikolai. Pavel is also the company’s CEO.
Pavel Durov was Mark Zuckerberg of Russia, as he originally founded the country’s largest social networking site, known as VK. The company made him a billionaire.
While VK still exists, Pavel with the social platform he founded in 2014. VK was known for fighting against the Kremlin’s censorship. Then, allies of Russian President Vladmir Putin and the Kremlin consolidated their shares in the company to obtain a shareholding. Pavel was forced to step down, sold his remaining shares and left Russia for Germany. According to Pavel, he was pressured for refusing to provide VK user data to the Russian government or for closing a group of anti-corruption defenders and opposition leader Alexei Navalny who worked on the social network.
Telegram is Pavel’s continuation of the online free speech efforts that started with VK. The company is registered in the USA as an LLC. The team moved in from the beginning and was last reported as located at.
Is the Telegram app safe?
The current rise in popularity of Telegram comes from users looking for a more secure messaging app. The company further emphasizes its focus on privacy. Interestingly, however, Telegram has an unstable history when it comes to this.
Unlike other secure messaging application options, Telegram does not have end-to-end encryption enabled by default. End-to-end encryption ensures that only the parties involved in the communication, that is, the sender and recipient, can read the messages. Even the messaging application that hosts the servers where those messages are stored cannot read them.
To enable end-to-end encryption in Telegram, you must make your chats “secret”. And you need to do this one by one with each of your contacts.
However, even then, not all Telegram messaging features are encrypted from end to end. One of the most popular features of Telegram is group chats. They are not end-to-end encrypted. Nor are messages sent to you by those who are not on your contact list for whom you have not yet enabled end-to-end encryption.
Telegram controversies
Telegram’s unique combination of private messaging and social networking features has been attractive to certain types of users. In addition, the application has very loose content moderation to increase your good faith with a focus on privacy, which is also attractive to these users.
Unfortunately, some of these users are extremists. The messaging app has a history of problems with foreign terrorists using the app. Telegram was once an important online advertising tool for groups like, although the company has repressed this in recent years.
Meanwhile, neo-Nazis and white supremacists have to proliferate on the platform, using it as a recruiting tool. Far-right personalities like Milo Yiannopoulos and Laura Loomer, who have been banned from more conventional social media platforms, have found a home on Telegram. More recently, Telegram has become an important center for those who believe in the far-right QAnon conspiracy that follows.
Like Mashable, Telegram also has a major pornography revenge problem, with users sharing non-consensual pornographic images on the platform for free.
Telegram has removed some channels from public groups before. More recently, the company has purged some neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups that spread hatred. However, Telegram is known for its moderation. In addition, the company itself cannot view these encrypted chats from end to end.
Telegram’s many controversies have even led to a case … against Apple, which was recently sued in an attempt to get the iPhone maker to remove the Telegram app from its App Store for the same reason it removed Parler: extremist content.
What is the difference between Telegram and WhatsApp?
Chances are good that if you’re considering Telegram as your new favorite messaging app, you’re running away from WhatsApp.
In 2014, Facebook said it was buying the popular WhatsApp messaging app. Since then, the social media giant has mainly treated WhatsApp as an entity separate from its social networking platform.
Everything changed in early 2021, when WhatsApp’s terms of service were to inform users that their data would now be shared with its parent company, Facebook. Users were outraged. Although WhatsApp tried to clarify these terms, users who already use Facebook would not be convinced. The magnitude of the WhatsApp exodus is unclear, but as competitors like Signal and Telegram reached the top of the App Store charts, WhatsApp has completely dropped out of the top 20 apps.
Many of these security-conscious users appear to have landed on Telegram. Ironically, if security comes first in your mind, WhatsApp is the best choice. WhatsApp messages are encrypted from end to end by default. In addition, all messages on WhatsApp are encrypted from end to end by default, even group chats.
Telegram, in some ways, functions as a social network even more than WhatsApp, the messaging service managed by a social network. Telegram users can choose a username along with registering the required phone number, while WhatsApp and other messengers associate your identity with your phone number. Telegram can also host up to 200,000 users in a single group chat. In WhatsApp, the group chat limit is 256 people.
When it comes to choosing between Telegram and WhatsApp, it really comes down to that: if you’re looking for a messaging service that will collect less of your data, choose WhatsApp. If you are looking for a messaging application that less likely to use that data somehow, Telegram is your choice. Telegram has previously stated that it has no interest in selling the company or advertising to users, so its data is less likely to fall into the hands of third parties.
OK, but what about Telegram vs. Signal?
If you are looking for a really secure messaging alternative for WhatsApp, opt for Telegram.
Signal is undoubtedly the most secure of these messaging platforms. The messages are encrypted from end to end ready to use. Users can even set messages to disappear after a period of time.
Another big advantage when it comes to security is the amount of data that Signal collects from you. All you give Signal is a phone number. Signal is actually on a system that would not require providing your phone number and would instead involve the secure storage of user identities on its servers. The Signal application is free and open source software.
In the past, the FBI had a signal for information about a user. The only data the company was able to provide was the date of creation of the user’s account and the last time he logged on. That’s how Signal collects little.
Signal is really meant for individual communication with people you know, although you can create group chats with up to 1,000 participants. However, if a user would like a messaging app more like a social network, then they would choose Telegram. Remember that Telegram group chats are not end-to-end encrypted
Where to download Telegram
If you want to download Telegram, go to get the desktop versions of the application for Mac and PC. Mobile versions of the Telegram app can be found on Apple apps for iPhone and iPad and Android.