Telegram is a cloud-based mobile and desktop messaging app with a focus on security and speed.
Telegram is the fastest messaging app on the market, connecting people via a unique, distributed network of data centers around the globe.
Pure instant messaging – simple, fast, secure, and synced across all your devices.
One of the world’s top 10 most downloaded apps with over 500 million active users.
You can access your messages from all your phones, tablets and computers at once. Telegram apps are standalone, so you don’t need to keep your phone connected. Start typing on one device and finish the message from another. Never lose your data again.
You can send media and files, without any limits on their type and size. Your entire chat history will require no disk space on your device, and will be securely stored in the Telegram cloud for as long as you need it.
SECURE: We made it our mission to provide the best security combined with ease of use. Everything on Telegram, including chats, groups, media, etc. is encrypted using a combination of 256-bit symmetric AES encryption, 2048-bit RSA encryption, and Diffie–Hellman secure key exchange.
100% FREE & OPEN: Telegram has a fully documented and free API for developers, open source apps and verifiable builds to prove the app you download is built from the exact same source code that is published.
POWERFUL: You can create group chats with up to 200,000 members, share large videos, documents of any type (.DOCX, .MP3, .ZIP, etc.) up to 2 GB each, and even set up bots for specific tasks. Telegram is the perfect tool for hosting online communities and coordinating teamwork.
RELIABLE: Built to deliver your messages using as little data as possible, Telegram is the most reliable messaging system ever made. It works even on the weakest mobile connections.
FUN: Telegram has powerful photo and video editing tools, animated stickers and emoji, fully customizable themes to change the appearance of your app, and an open sticker/GIF platform to cater to all your expressive needs.
SIMPLE: While providing an unprecedented array of features, we take great care to keep the interface clean. Telegram is so simple you already know how to use it.
PRIVATE: We take your privacy seriously and will never give any third parties access to your data. You can delete any message you ever sent or received for both sides, at any time and without a trace. Telegram will never use your data to show you ads.
For those interested in maximum privacy, Telegram offers Secret Chats. Secret Chat messages can be programmed to self-destruct automatically from both participating devices. This way you can send all types of disappearing content — messages, photos, videos, and even files. Secret Chats use End-to-End Encryption to ensure that a message can only be read by its intended recipient.
We keep expanding the boundaries of what you can do with a messaging app.
A Complete Guide to using Telegram Messenger App!
In this video we are going to learn how to start a chat, create a group and create a channel in Telegram. Do you know telegram has a secret chat?
Learn how to start a secret chat. You will learn best practices in Telegram.
What is Telegram? What do I do here?
Telegram is a messaging app with a focus on speed and security, it’s super-fast, simple and free. You can use Telegram on all your devices at the same time — your messages sync seamlessly across any number of your phones, tablets or computers. Telegram has over 500 million monthly active users and is one of the 10 most downloaded apps in the world.
With Telegram, you can send messages, photos, videos and files of any type (doc, zip, mp3, etc), as well as create groups for up to 200,000 people or channels for broadcasting to unlimited audiences. You can write to your phone contacts and find people by their usernames. As a result, Telegram is like SMS and email combined — and can take care of all your personal or business messaging needs. In addition to this, we support end-to-end encrypted voice and video calls, as well as voice chats in groups for thousands of participants.
Who is Telegram for?
Telegram is for everyone who wants fast and reliable messaging and calls. Business users and small teams may like the large groups, usernames, desktop apps and powerful file sharing options.
Since Telegram groups can have up to 200,000 members, we support replies, mentions and hashtags that help maintain order and keep communication in large communities efficient. You can appoint admins with advanced tools to help these communities prosper in peace. Public groups can be joined by anyone and are powerful platforms for discussions and collecting feedback.
In case you’re more into pictures, Telegram has animated gif search, a state of the art photo editor, and an open sticker platform (find some cool stickers here or here). What’s more, there is no need to worry about disk space on your device. With Telegram’s cloud support and cache management options, Telegram can take up nearly zero space on your phone.
Those looking for extra privacy should check out our advanced settings and rather revolutionary policy. And if you want secrecy, try our device-specific Secret Chats with self-destructing messages, photos, and videos — and lock your app with an additional passcode.
How is Telegram different from WhatsApp?
Unlike WhatsApp, Telegram is a cloud-based messenger with seamless sync.
As a result, you can access your messages from several devices at once, including tablets and computers, and share an unlimited number of photos, videos and files (doc, zip, mp3, etc.) of up to 2 GB each.
Telegram needs less than 100 MB on your device – you can keep all your media in the cloud without deleting things – simply clear your cache to free up space.
Thanks to Telegram’s multi-data center infrastructure and encryption, it is faster and way more secure. On top of that, private messaging on Telegram is free and will stay free — no ads, no subscription fees, forever.
Telegram’s API and code is open, and developers are welcome to create their own Telegram apps. We also have a Bot API, a platform for developers that allows anyone to easily build specialized tools for Telegram, integrate any services, and even accept payments from users around the world.
Which devices can I use?
You can use Telegram on smartphones, tablets, and even computers. We have apps for iOS (9.0 and above), Android (4.1 and up), a native macOS app and a universal desktop app for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Telegram Web can also help to quickly do something on the go.
You can log in to Telegram from as many of your devices as you like — all at the same time. Just use your main mobile phone number to log in everywhere, your cloud chats will sync instantly.
The Telegram API is open for developers, should you want to build your own applications for other platforms.
Who are the people behind Telegram?
Telegram is supported by Pavel Durov and his brother Nikolai. Pavel supports Telegram financially and ideologically while Nikolai’s input is technological. To make Telegram possible, Nikolai developed a unique custom data protocol, which is open, secure and optimized for work with multiple data-centers. As a result, Telegram combines security, reliability and speed on any network.
Where is Telegram based?
The Telegram development team is based in Dubai.
Most of the developers behind Telegram originally come from St. Petersburg, the city famous for its unprecedented number of highly skilled engineers. The Telegram team had to leave Russia due to local IT regulations and has tried a number of locations as its base, including Berlin, London and Singapore. We’re currently happy with Dubai, although are ready to relocate again if local regulations change.
How are you going to make money out of this?
We believe in fast and secure messaging that is also 100% free.
Our founder and CEO Pavel Durov, who financed Telegram throughout most of its history, has outlined a strategy to make Telegram sustainable in this post.
While Telegram will introduce monetization in 2021 to pay for the infrastructure and developer salaries, making profits will never be an end-goal for us.
What makes Telegram groups cool?
Telegram groups can have up to 200,000 members each and are extremely powerful communication tools. Here are a few key features that make them stand out in the messaging world:
Unified history
Edit your messages after posting, delete them so that they disappear for everyone.
Cross-platform availability
Access your messages anytime, from any number of your mobile or desktop devices.
Instant search
Find the message you’re looking for, even among millions. Filter by sender to make searching easier.
Replies, mentions, hashtags
Easily trace a conversation and keep communication efficient, no matter the group size.
Smart notifications
Mute the group to get notifications only when people mention you or reply to your messages.
Pinned messages
You can pin any message to be displayed at the top of the chat screen. All members will get a notification — even if they muted ordinary messages from your group.
Moderation tools
Appoint administrators that can mass-delete messages, control membership, and pin important messages. Define their admin privileges with granular precision.
Group permissions
Set default permissions to restrict all members from posting specific kinds of content. Or even restrict members from sending messages altogether – and let the admins chat amongst themselves while everybody else is watching.
File sharing
Send and receive files of any type, up to 2 GB in size each, access them instantly on your other devices.
Public groups
Get a short link for your group and make it public, like t.me/publictestgroup. This way, anybody can view the group’s entire chat history and join to post messages.
Customization via bots
Create custom tools for any specific needs using our Bot API and Inline Bots.
What’s the difference between groups and channels?
Telegram groups are ideal for sharing stuff with friends and family or collaboration in small teams. But groups can also grow very large and support communities of up to 200,000 members. You can make any group public, toggle persistent history to control whether or not new members have access to earlier messages and appoint administrators with granular privileges. You can also pin important messages to the top of the screen so that all members can see them, including those who have just joined.
Channels are a tool for broadcasting messages to large audiences. In fact, a channel can have an unlimited number of subscribers. When you post in a channel, the message is signed with the channel’s name and photo and not your own. Each message in a channel has a view counter that gets updated when the message is viewed, including its forwarded copies.
How do I create a group?
iOS: Start a new message (tap the icon in the top right corner in Chats) > ‘New Group’.
Android: Tap the circular pencil icon in the chat list > ‘New Group’.
Telegram Desktop: Click the menu button in the top left corner > ‘New Group’.
Can I assign administrators?
You can add administrators to help you manage your group and define their privileges with granular precision.
iOS: Go to Group Info (tap the photo in the top right corner on the group‘s chat screen) > Edit > Administrators.
Android: Go to Group Info (tap the name in the header) > the pencil icon (in the top right corner) > Administrators.
Telegram Desktop: When in the group, click ‘…’ in the top right corner > Manage group > Administrators.
How do I add more members? What’s an invite link?
You can add your contacts, or using search by username.
It is easy to migrate existing groups to Telegram by sending people an invite link. To create an invite link, go to Group Info > Add Member > Invite to Group via Link.
Anyone who has Telegram installed will be able to join your group by following this link. If you choose to revoke the link, it will stop working immediately.
How secure is Telegram?
Telegram is more secure than mass market messengers like WhatsApp and Line. We are based on the MTProto protocol (see description and advanced FAQ), built upon time-tested algorithms to make security compatible with high-speed delivery and reliability on weak connections. We are continuously working with the community to improve the security of our protocol and clients.
Why Telegram has become the hottest messaging app in the world ?
Secret messages and advanced cryptography pose a challenge to WhatsApp
When WhatsApp went down for four hours this weekend, nearly 5 million people signed up for messaging service Telegram.
The app skyrocketed to the top of the App Store charts, and is now the top free app in 46 countries from Germany to Ecuador. In the US and several other countries, the app is no. 1 in the social networking category, ahead of Facebook, WhatsApp, Kik, and others.
It’s not immediately clear why Telegram emerged as the alternative of choice following WhatsApp’s downtime. Users could have switched to Kik, or Facebook Messenger, or LINE — all of which have hundreds of millions of users.
There’s seemingly something different about Telegram. Its rise isn’t only due to WhatsApp’s acquisition and subsequent downtime. “We have been the no. 1 app in Spanish, Arabic, and several Latin American app stores for several weeks before the Facebook deal happened,” says Telegram’s Markus Ra. “The growth was there — so the WhatsApp acquisition and problems merely multiplied the effect across all affected countries.” According to app analytics site App Annie, Telegram started truly gaining steam on February 17th, days before the WhatsApp news even hit.
Built by the pioneering Durov brothers behind Russia’s largest social network, VKontakte (also known as VK), Telegram is a messaging service combining the speed of WhatsApp with Snapchat’s ephemerality and advanced new security measures. WhatsApp might have heralded the first time we heard of Telegram, but it certainly won’t be the last.
Telegram feels in many ways like a straight-up clone of WhatsApp, from its green double-checkmark read receipts to its cartoonish wallpapers.
There’s also the usual gamut of messaging app features including the ability to see a friend’s online status and attach photos, videos, your location, contacts, and documents to messages. But where it lacks originality, Telegram makes up for it in speed and security features. “Telegram is the fastest and most secure mass market messaging system in the world,” the company claims, which it attributes in part to Nikolai Durov’s open-sourced MTProto protocol. Telegram was in fact built as a testing bed for MTProto, Reuters reported when the app launched back in August. The company is so confident in the security of MTProto that it’s offering $200,000 to anyone who can crack it. It’s not unusual for companies to offer bug bounties, but bounties of this size are generally only reserved for critical bugs in widely used apps like Windows.
“The no. 1 reason for me to support and help launch Telegram was to build a means of communication that can’t be accessed by the Russian security agencies,” Durov told TechCrunch. Durov built in a feature that lets you start a “Secret Chat” with any of your friends. According to Telegram, Secret Chats offer end-to-end encryption, leave no trace on the company’s servers, and let you set Snapchat-esque self-destruct timers on messages that range from two seconds to one week.
There’s also the ability to check the security of your Secret Chats using an image that serves as an encryption key. By comparing your encryption key to a friend’s, you can effectively verify that your conversation is secure and less vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks, the company says. But despite Telegram’s alleged sophistication, no cryptographic method is infallible. The company has, in fact, already doled out $100,000 to one developer for finding a critical bug, TechCrunch reports.
The no. 1 reason for me to [help launch] Telegram was to build a means of communication that can’t be accessed by the Russian security agencies.
Telegram is interesting not just because of its stringent security standards, but also because it allows any developer to build a Telegram client of their own, and even for desktop computers.
Most new messaging services today, including WhatsApp, build one-size-fits-all messaging apps and lock out third-party developers.
It’s hard to blame them, since maintaining one federated language and security paradigm across dozens of apps is difficult. Also, making money off of a platform takes more thought than making money off a simple paid app. Yet, the Durovs’ VKontakte found a lot of success letting developers build alternate versions of its site. More importantly, Telegram operates as a non-profit organization, and doesn’t plan to charge for its services.
“Telegram is not intended to bring revenue, it will never sell ads or accept outside investment. It also cannot be sold,” the company writes in its FAQ. “We’re not building a ‘user base,’ we are building a messenger for the people.” If Telegram ever “runs out” of the money supplied by the Durov brothers, the company says, it will ask for donations from its users.
Telegram’s noble goals echo the sentiments of many bright-eyed startup founders, but with the Durovs’ pocketbook in hand and the service’s open API available to third-party developers, it may actually have a chance at fulfilling its goals. Telegram isn’t a CryptoCat for the masses, considering it uses your phone number, of all things, as an identifier — but it’s an important step towards finding a highly encrypted messaging platform that’s accessible to anyone.
Championing an ostensibly noble goal, free services, and the experience of VKontakte’s creators, Telegram would seem like a great alternative to any of the leading messages apps out there. After WhatsApp’s acquisition news and downtime, the app is spiking at the right time. The company incentivized several million new users into switching over, but keeping those users will be a continuous challenge. “The switching cost for users on a phone number-based messaging services is at or near zero,” argues Union Square Ventures partner Albert Wenger in a blog post, but that’s only half the story. A network is only as strong as the number of friends you have using it, and convincing all of your friends to switch is no easy task.
If Facebook thought that WhatsApp users were liable to switch at a moment’s notice, it wouldn’t have paid $19 billion for the company.
Facebook paid for WhatsApp’s user base, but also for its brand — a brand that spent years solving a very important problem: that it costs a fortune to text across borders. Perhaps the next messaging problem to solve is personal security, considering WhatsApp’s alleged cryptographic weaknesses and the NSA’s data collection policies. WhatsApp became synonymous with texting.
Perhaps for Telegram to succeed, it will need to become synonymous with security.
Telegram
Telegram is a freeware, cross-platform, cloud-based instant messaging (IM) system.
The service also provides end-to-end encrypted video calling, VoIP, file sharing and several other features. It was launched for iOS on 14 August 2013 and Android in October 2013.
The servers of Telegram are distributed worldwide to decrease frequent data load with five data centers in different regions, while the operational center is based in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
Various client apps are available for desktop and mobile platforms including official apps for Android, iOS, Windows, macOS and Linux (although registration requires an iOS or Android device and a working phone number).
There are also two official Telegram web twin apps – WebK and WebZ – and numerous unofficial clients that make use of Telegram’s protocol. All of Telegram’s official components are open source, with the exception of the server which is closed-sourced and proprietary.
Telegram provides end-to-end encrypted voice and video calls and optional end-to-end encrypted “secret” chats. Cloud chats and groups are encrypted between the app and the server, so that ISPs and other third-parties on the network can’t access data, but the Telegram server can. Users can send text and voice messages, make voice and video calls, and share an unlimited number of images, documents (2 GB per file), user locations, animated stickers, contacts, and audio files. In January 2021, Telegram surpassed 500 million monthly active users.
It was the most downloaded app worldwide in January 2021 with 1 billion downloads globally as of late August 2021.
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