The company says this is done “to protect the data that is not covered by end-to-end encryption”. It does not disclose where it rents offices or which legal entities it uses to rent them, citing the need to “shelter the team from unnecessary influence” and protect users from governmental data requests. As of March 2025,update Telegram has more than 1 billion monthly active users, with India as the country with the most users. The company’s founder has said he wants the app to have an anti-censorship tool for Iran and China similar to the app’s role in fighting censorship in Russia. All issues were patched before the paper’s publication with a security bounty paid out to the researchers.
Telegram also offers an API that allows developers to create bots, which are accounts controlled by programs. Telegram has public APIs with which developers can access the same functionality as Telegram’s official apps to build their own instant messaging applications. Telegram stated that it does not have access to the data, while the platform will share the information only with the authorized recipient.
- Throughout 2020, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps used groups and channels to dox Iraqi and Iranian citizens, while sharing propagandistic posts on the platform.
- This partially addresses the concern about the lack of scrutiny while confirming the formal security of the protocol’s latest version.
- In the Privacy and Security submenu of Settings, users have the option to hide their “Last Seen” status, which reflects the last time the user opened a Telegram app.
- Telegram’s default chat function missed points because the communications were not encrypted with keys the provider did not have access to, users could not verify contacts’ identities, and past messages were not secure if the encryption keys were stolen.
Along with the shared photographs, anonymous accounts shared private information of the women, including phone numbers and social media profiles, encouraging members of the group to contact the women and ask for sexual favors. Far-right and white supremacist communities on Telegram have spread videos of the Christchurch and Halle shootings in groups and channels after the original livestreams were taken down by Twitch. The company only partially fulfilled a court request for personal data on two antisemitic Telegram groups, which authorities considered an intentional lack of cooperation. After the 2021 coup d’état in Myanmar, the junta used Telegram channels to spread propaganda and organize misinformation campaigns against pro-democracy groups. In 2023, Saudi Arabia’s Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology (Etidal) reported that in collaboration with Telegram, over 59 million pieces of extremist content had been removed from the platform since 2022.
- An investigation published in August 2024 by the BBC showed that Telegram has not responded to requests to join the US–based National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), nor from the UK–based Internet Watch Foundation, both non–profit NGOs.
- The gateway sends users’ Telegram name, username, and profile picture to the website owner, while users’ phone number remains hidden.
- Non-Latin characters are transliterated, spaces are replaced with hyphens, and the date of publication is added to the address.
- Such content is usually linked to Telegram allowing misinformation on the platform as, according to Pavel Durov, “conspiracy theories only strengthen each time their content is removed by moderators”.
- Regarding Telegram, the report cites its lack of end-to-end encryption by default, its Russian origins and third-party open source intelligence as major critical points.
While its regular chats lack full end-to-end encryption, its balance of speed, security, and functionality makes it a top-tier desktop messaging solution. Telegram for Desktop offers a powerful, privacy-conscious messaging platform that caters to both casual and advanced users. In a later blog post, Durov directly stated that the block was a result of pressure from Google and Apple as refusal to comply with their policies would result “in an immediate shutdown of Telegram for millions of users”. The messages were considered vulgar, racist, and homophobic, with members of the chat discussing how they would use the media to target potential political opponents. Third parties were asked to break the service’s cryptography and disclose the information contained within a secret chat between two computer-controlled users.
Telegram Group Bot
Telegram made substantial efforts to ban illegal content such as child abuse and pro-terrorist channels, including a partnership with Europol to eliminate IS presence on the platform, but communities of far-right extremist users are still on the app. In the same year, Telegram reportedly banned more than 350,000 bots and channels, including those that contained child abuse and terrorism-related content. In late 2020, Durov announced that the company was working on its own ad platform, and would integrate non-targeted ads in public one-to-many channels, that already were selling and displaying ads in the form of regular messages. Users can however import chat history, including both messages and media, from WhatsApp, Line, and KakaoTalk due to data portability, either making a new chat to hold the messages or adding them to an existing one. Telegram allows groups, bots and channels with a verified social media or Wikipedia page to be verified, but not individual user accounts. Telegram’s FAQ page says it does not process requests related to illegal content in chats and group chats, and that “to this day, we have disclosed 0 bytes of user messages to third parties, including governments”.
Data Linked to You
Android version based on TDLib.The iOS version was discontinued, with its code merged with the main Telegram app. It is automatically updated and will most likely get new versions faster than the apps in the Play Store and App Store. This enables the building of clients for non-traditional platforms like KaiOS (supported by Telekram), or S30+/Mocor Feature phones (still in development). The built-in media viewer supports common media formats – JPEG, PNG, WebP for images and H.264 and HEVC in videos in MP4 container and MP3, FLAC, Vorbis, Opus and AAC for audio. Telegram has various client apps, some developed by Telegram Messenger LLP and some by the community.
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In July 2024, ESET reported a vulnerability allowed malicious files being sent to users masked in multimedia. On 30 March 2020, an Elasticsearch database holding 42 million records containing user IDs and phone numbers of Iranian users was exposed online without a password. The organization was favorable to Telegram’s secure chats and partially free code but criticized the mandatory transfer of contact data to Telegram’s servers and the lack of an imprint or address on the service’s website. Since July 2016, Line has also applied end-to-end encryption to all of its messages by default, though it has also been criticized for being susceptible to replay attacks and the lack of forward secrecy between clients. When the user assigns a local password in the desktop application, data is also locally encrypted. Pavel Durov has argued that this is because it helps to avoid third-party unsecured backups, and to allow users to access messages and files from any device.
The blocking of the main Smart Voting bot was criticized by allies of Alexei Navalny, a Kremlin critic and former opposition leader. Hundreds of pages of a group chat between Rosselló and members of his staff were leaked. Andriy Kovalenko, head of the security council’s centre on countering disinformation, clarified that the ban was limited to official devices and did not extend to personal phones. Telegram has been blocked temporarily or permanently by some governments including Iran, China, Brazil, and Pakistan.
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On 24 August 2024, Pavel Durov, who is both a French and UAE citizen, was arrested in France by French authorities. The post included a screenshot showing an internal email sent by the App Store to developers, demanding the takedown of content related to Navalny. Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh called the block and the deletion of the tactical voting app from app stores “censorship … imposed by private companies”.
Telegram Messenger
Beginning in December 2016, Telegram began publishing daily moderation statistics regarding terror-related content in an official channel named @ISISwatch. In September 2024, Telegram announced that it would begin to hand over users’ IP addresses and phone numbers to authorities who have search warrants or other valid legal requests. Such content is usually linked to Telegram allowing misinformation on the platform as, according to Pavel Durov, “conspiracy theories only strengthen each time their content is removed by moderators”. In 2017, in an attempt to monetize Telegram without advertising, the company began the development of a blockchain platform dubbed either “The Open Network” or “Telegram Open Network” (TON) and its native cryptocurrency “Gram”. According to him, these features will require more bandwidth and the added cost will be covered by the feature prices, in addition to covering some of the costs incurred by regular users. After the shutdown of the TON project, the company needed to repay the investors the money that was not spent on its development during 2018 and the beginning of 2019, while the project was active.
An investigation published in August 2024 by the BBC showed that Telegram has not responded to requests to join the US–based National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), nor from the UK–based Internet Watch Foundation, both non–profit NGOs. This was done without prior agreement or knowledge of the women, causing intense public backlash and demand for the group to be shut down. In January 2021, North Macedonian media outlets reported that a now-banned Telegram group, with more than 7,000 members, titled “Public Room” (“Јавна соба”) was used to share nude photos of women, often young teenage girls. It also provides an email address dedicated to reports of content related to child abuse. Telegram has been used to distribute illegal pornography, including child pornography.
In 2018, Telegram sent a message to all Iranian users stating that the Telegram Talai and Hotgram unofficial clients are not secure. In June 2017, Pavel Durov in an interview said that U.S. intelligence agencies tried to bribe the company’s developers to weaken Telegram’s encryption or install a backdoor during their visit to the U.S. in 2016. Pavel Durov has said that Telegram users in “troubled countries” should enable two-factor authentication by creating passwords in order to prevent this. Telegram’s optional secret chat function, which provides end-to-end encryption, received a score of 7 out of 7 points on the scorecard. In August 2024, an EU probe was launched into Telegram to determine whether the platform breached EU digital rules by failing to provide accurate user numbers. A few days later, following repeated criticism, the same judge suspended his order until the police issue a report on the consequences this measure would have for users.
The desktop app runs efficiently even on low-end hardware, consuming minimal system resources and offering stable performance. Animated stickers, emojis, and chat backgrounds add personality without clutter. Telegram on the desktop is the version of the free popular cloud-based messaging app developed by Pavel Durov.
Accessibility
Messages on the cloud are encrypted client-to-server, but privacy-conscious users might find this distinction important. Telegram is known for its privacy-first approach, although it’s important to note that end-to-end encryption is only enabled in Secret Chats, not regular ones. The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports.
In April 2022, bots gained support for customized interfaces and inline page loading. It features a website widget that can be embedded into websites, allowing users to sign into a third party website with their Telegram account. These platforms also enable businesses to add Telegram chat widget to their websites and gives them the option to automate conversations or let human agents reply. In April 2021, the Payments 2.0 upgrade enabled bot payments within any chat, using third-party services such as Sberbank, Tranzoo, Payme, CLICK, LiqPay and ECOMMPAY to process the credit card information. To activate an inline bot, a user must type the bot’s username and a query in the message field. The Dutch website Tweakers reported that an invited bot can potentially read all group messages, when the bot controller changes the access settings silently at a later point in time.
The protocol was developed by Nikolai Durov and other developers at Telegram and, as of version 2.0, is based on 256-bit symmetric AES encryption, 2048-bit RSA encryption and Diffie–Hellman key exchange. In July 2018, Telegram introduced their online authorization and identity-management system, Telegram Passport, for platforms that require real-life identification. When an author adds links to YouTube, Vimeo, or Twitter, the service allows you to embed their content directly in the article.
Scammers employ a variety of confidence tricks to entice users into completing “prepaid tasks” in which users deposit money into scammers’ accounts with the expectation of receiving high returns. However, deputy prime minister and minister of digital transformation Mykhailo Fedorov denied any data from the app being leaked. In August 2024, journalist Ko Narin of the Hankyoreh exposed Telegram chats of teenagers who used generative AI to deepfake images of their classmates and teachers for porn. The President of North Macedonia Stevo Pendarovski, along with the Prime Minister of North Macedonia Zoran Zaev, demanded an immediate reaction from Telegram and threatened to completely restrict access to the app in the country if no actions were taken.
Video and voice calls
The company was initially supported by founding CEO Pavel Durov’s personal funds after the sale of his stake in VK. In addition, Telegram offers functions for making payments directly within the platform, alongside an external service such as Stripe. In February 2015, creators of the unofficial WhatsApp+ client released the Telegram Plus app, later renamed to Plus Messenger, after their original project got a cease-and-desist order from WhatsApp.
This partially addresses the concern about the lack of scrutiny while confirming the formal security of the protocol’s latest version. In December 2020, a study titled “Automated Symbolic Verification of Telegram’s MTProto 2.0” was published, confirming the security of the updated MTProto https://chickenroadapp.in/ 2.0 and reviewing it while pointing out several theoretical vulnerabilities. Criticisms were also aimed at Telegram’s use of a custom-designed encryption protocol. The editorial staff was made aware of the advertisement by a Telegram user and the online magazine Übermedien. This is seen as an issue for non-profit organizations and similar entities who want to operate a Telegram channel. As of August 2025, there was no option for channel owners to opt out of this mechanism.
The attack relied on people downloading a malware-infected file from any source, at which point it would replace Telegram files on the device and ‘clone’ session data. The accounts were extracted from not Telegram but an unofficial version of Telegram, in what appears to be a possibly government-sanctioned fork. Security company Group-IB suggested SS7 mobile signalling protocol weaknesses, illegal usage of surveillance equipment, or telecom insider attacks. On 12 June 2019, Telegram confirmed that it suffered a denial-of-service attack which disrupted normal app functionality for approximately one hour. The Telegram team tweeted that it was either because the user had malware or they were not using two-step verification.
Telegraph natively supports Instant View, a feature which lets users read full articles in the chat with no load time and without opening an external browser. These collectible gifts are registered on the TON blockchain as a form of NFT and can then be traded or sold both on the Telegram platform via the in-app Gift Marketplace or via outside platforms and marketplaces. In October 2024, Telegram launched Gifts, a type of virtual cosmetic item that users can purchase and send to each other in the app using Telegram Stars. In August 2022, Telegram launched an emoji platform where users could upload their own custom emoji, either in animated or static versions. Any Telegram user can join the affiliate program and be rewarded for referring others to the bot or mini app by receiving a commission from purchases made by the people they referred. Examples of platforms providing Telegram bot integration include respond.io, Manychat and Trengo.