But according to Pavel, Telegram disclosed data for 203 legal requests from the Brazilian government in January to September 2024 and 6,992 legal requests from India, its largest market, during that period. Its data centers are spread across a complex corporate structure of shell companies in various jurisdictions to avoid compliance with government subpoenas. Telegram is registered as a company in the British Virgin Islands and as an LLC in Dubai. It was the most downloaded app worldwide in January 2021, with 1 billion downloads globally as of late August 2021. Its servers are distributed worldwide with several data centers, and its headquarters are in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. You can change the theme https://chickenroadapp.in/ of Google Maps on your mobile device.
Change to dark or color mode on your Android device
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. 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.
- The funding was required to cover the debts amounting to $625.7 million, including $433 million to investors who bought futures for Gram tokens in 2018 and included purchasers such as David Yakobashvili.
- Telegram is registered as a company in the British Virgin Islands and as an LLC in Dubai.
- You can change the theme of Google Maps on your mobile device.
- 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.
- They can respond to messages or mentions directly or can be invited into groups, and are able to perform tasks, integrate with other programs and host mini apps.
Device settings
A distinctive feature of this version is the ability to view channels/groups on a specific topic without censorship, which cannot be viewed from an app distributed from Google Play or the Apple Store due to their policies.citation needed For encrypted chats (branded as Secret Chats), Telegram uses a custom-built symmetric encryption scheme called MTProto. In October 2024, Telegram launched a verification platform, called Telegram Gateway, allowing third-party services to authenticate their users by sending verification codes via Telegram. In December 2020, Telegram launched a Bugs and Suggestions platform, where users can submit bug reports and suggestion cards for new features. 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.
Privacy and security features
All issues were patched before the paper’s publication with a security bounty paid out to the researchers. In July 2021, researchers from Royal Holloway, University of London and ETH Zurich published an analysis of the MTProto protocol, concluding that the protocol could provide a „confidential and integrity-protected channel“ for communication. 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.
arrest of Pavel Durov
Examples of platforms providing Telegram bot integration include respond.io, Manychat and Trengo. In June 2015, Telegram launched a platform for third-party developers to create bots. The interface shows users a visual representation of their storage usage and also lets them sort their cached media by size to clear specific items.
Telegram has various client apps, some developed by Telegram Messenger LLP and some by the community. 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. For example, an article titled „Telegraph (blog platform)“ published on 17 November would receive the URL /Telegraph-blog-platform-11-17. Specific limited-edition gifts can be upgraded to a collectible version, unlocking a random appearance and other attributes.
Telegram Messenger
- The company says this is done „to protect the data that is not covered by end-to-end encryption“.
- It noted that while the message data is encrypted on the device, it could not analyze the transmission due to a lack of source code.
- 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“.
- The Devices submenu shows all of the active devices on a user’s account and allows them to remotely log out from those devices.
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.
Users can schedule messages to send at a particular time or when their conversation partner comes online, as well as choose to send a message „without sound“ without a notification. Some stickers feature full-screen effects that play out when first sent or when tapped. By default, any account that is inactive for 6 months is automatically deleted, though the period can be shortened or extended up to 18 months through the Settings menu. In October 2014, South Korean government surveillance plans drove many of its citizens to switch to Telegram from the Korean app KakaoTalk. Users can use Telegram’s transparency bot to check how many legal requests from their country it has processed.
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. Telegram has public APIs with which developers can access the same functionality as Telegram’s official apps to build their own instant messaging applications. 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.
In France, initial investigations of a terrorist act revealed the perpetrators used Telegram to communicate, though follow-up research suggested that the extent of the app’s use was „unclear“. ISIS has used Telegram for recruiting attempts with some cells recommending the app to their followers. Moldovan president Maia Sandu denounced that Telegram refused any collaboration with the Moldovan state authorities against illegal activities taking place in its platform such as vote buying.
Watch YouTube in Dark theme
The desktop clients, excluding the macOS client, do not feature options for end-to-end encrypted messages. 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 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.
Telegram also offers an API that allows developers to create bots, which are accounts controlled by programs. Telegram stated that it does not have access to the data, while the platform will share the information only with the authorized recipient. When an online service requires such identification documents and verification, it forwards the information to the platform with the user’s permission. It asks users to upload their own official documents such as passport, identity card, driver license, etc.
In March 2021, Telegram launched a bonds offering to cover the debt and fund further growth of the app. The company agreed to pay an $18.5 million penalty and return $1.22 billion to Gram purchasers. In January and February 2018, the company ran a private sale of futures contracts for Grams, raising around $1.7 billion. In June 2024, Telegram launched Telegram Stars to facilitate in-app purchases of digital goods and services, in compliance with policies from the App Store and Play Store. Durov said the bond sale „will further solidify our position as an independent platform that is able to challenge the ‚Goliaths‘ of our industry“.
Any user can also send a message to a special „Saved Messages“ chat as a form of bookmarking them. Sticker packs are made by Telegram designers as well as regular users and can be shared via links. Reactions can be used to respond to a message with emoji, with Premium users having access to more reaction choices and the ability to leave more reactions per message. As users can be logged into many devices at once, starting to type a message on one of them will create a „cloud draft“ that syncs with others, so typing can be started on a phone and finished on a laptop, for example.
When a user chooses to hide their profile photo, they can set an alternative „Public Profile Picture“ that will be shown instead. Hiding the status obfuscates the exact time the user was online and hides the statuses of other people respectively. By default, logging into Telegram requires either an SMS message sent to the registered number or a code message sent to one of the active sessions on another device. In April 2025, Telegram launched secure group calls with end-to-end encryption by using blockchain-like encryption technology. Channel owners are able to use Telegram to create giveaways, randomly awarding channel members with prizes such as Telegram Premium subscriptions to their followers, based on certain criteria.
In July 2023, Telegram surpassed 800 million monthly active users, later reaching 900 million in March 2024 and 950 million in July 2024. On 19 June 2022, Telegram announced that it had reached 700 million monthly active users. On 8 January 2021, Pavel announced in a blog post that Telegram had reached „about 500 million“ monthly active users. On 24 April 2020, Telegram announced that it had reached 400 million monthly active users. According to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, as of October 2019, Telegram had 300 million monthly active users worldwide.