In March 2014, Telegram promised that “all code will be released eventually”, including all the various client applications (Android, iOS, desktop, etc.) and the server-side code. 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.
Servers
In February 2018, Telegram launched their social login feature to its users, named Telegram Login. In July 2025, Telegram partnered with the rapper and media figure Snoop Dogg to release a set of limited edition collectible gifts alongside his music video “Gifts”. As of 2023, Telegram Premium can be acquired via in-app purchases facilitated by Apple and Google, directly via Telegram’s @PremiumBot, or with cryptocurrency on the Fragment platform.
How to Use Telegram Web Login for Multiple Accounts with DICloak
On 9 June 2019, The Intercept released leaked Telegram messages exchanged between current Brazilian Minister of Justice and former judge Sérgio Moro and federal prosecutors. MTProto 2.0 is seen by qualified cryptographers as a Kiekka Casino vast improvement to Telegram’s security. The Telegram team responded that the flaw does not affect message security and that “a future patch would address the concern”. Nevertheless, they said they saw “no reason why Telegram should use a less secure encryption scheme when more secure (and at least as efficient) solutions exist”. In December 2015, two researchers from Aarhus University published a report in which they demonstrated that MTProto 1.0 did not achieve indistinguishability under chosen-ciphertext attack (IND-CCA) or authenticated encryption. The EFF said that the results “should not be read as endorsements of individual tools or guarantees of their security”, and that they were merely indications that the projects were “on the right track”.
Similar to other social platforms, Telegram users can post stories, a type of short-form content. In June 2021, an update introduced a new bot menu where users can browse and send commands while in a chat with a bot. Bots are also commonly used for businesses to communicate with customers as the bot APIs integrate with communication platforms so that Telegram messages can be sent and received in an omnichannelinbox. Certain approved bots are also able to integrate into the attachment menu, making them accessible in any chat. Auto download settings can also be applied based on chat type such as group, channel or private. Similarly, users can hide their phone number and profile photo from people based on categories such as Non-Contacts or by adding exceptions.
Since 2017, Telegram users have been able to initiate one-on-one calls in private chats. Similarly, groups and channels can have content protection enabled, which prevents screenshots, forwarding and downloading of media. Premium users have the ability to set any chat folder as the default screen in the app while regular users will always see the full chat list when first opening the app.
How many accounts can I use with the Telegram Web Login?
Pavel Durov has said that Telegram users in “troubled countries” should enable two-factor authentication by creating passwords in order to prevent this. Login SMS messages are known to have been intercepted in Iran, Russia and Germany, possibly in coordination with phone or telecom companies. In April 2016, several Russian opposition members’ accounts were hijacked by intercepting the SMS messages used for login authorization.
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. Telegram allows groups, bots and channels with a verified social media or Wikipedia page to be verified, but not individual user accounts. 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 import chat history, including both messages and media, from WhatsApp, Line, and KakaoTalk due to data portability, making a new chat to hold the messages or adding them to an existing one. Telegram content is synced between users’ logged-in devices automatically through cloud storage, except for device-specific secret chats. 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”.
Which Platforms Support Telegram?
Less known is Olvid, which replaces the phone number with its identity scheme. Signal is ad-free, does not collect or track data, and is practically non-communal in its functionality, as it is used primarily as a means of one-on-one conversations. Its open-source code welcomes the level of transparency, and the application is a strong tool to engage in encrypted messaging, calling, and file sharing with a more limited group. Telegram open APIs have allowed developers to create their own applications, meaning that the ecosystem is not tied to a particular official client. Telegram also allows you to have several accounts on a single client, which may be helpful when you do not want your personal and business communication to be mixed.
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. The hypothesis is that either mobile devices were hacked by SIM swap or the targets’ computers were compromised.
Users with a Telegram Premium subscription have a number of “boosts” that they can give to channels, which allow the channel to “level up” and unlock features, such as the ability to customize messages or post stories as the channel. When forwarded, polls retain the answer data and any votes cast in other chats will count toward the overall total. Users can freely join public chats and find them using the in-app search function, while private chats require an invitation. Groups are large multi-user chats that support up to 200,000 members and can be public or private. Secret Chats restrict screenshotting by Android devices and warn when one is taken on an iOS device, while also hiding the chat contents from the final image. Telegram messages in private chats can be edited for up to 48 hours; an “edited” icon indicates changes.
Following the launch of Stars, Telegram released several updates to their functionality, such as allowing Stars to be used to unlock media in channels or to buy gifts for other users. 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. Such bots are used, among other things, to emulate and play old games in the app and inform users about vaccine availability for COVID-19. For users who signed in from the European Economic Area (EEA) or United Kingdom, the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) are supported by storing data only on servers in the Netherlands, and designating a London-based company as their responsible data controller. Premium users have access to extra stickers, emoji, reactions, and customization features like a special badge and the ability to change the look of their messages in chats.
Specific users can be tagged in the group by adding @username to a message, where “username” is that particular user’s username. Ownership of channels and groups can be transferred to one of the admins if the owner wishes to give up their rights. They support flexible admin rights and can use bots for moderation to prevent spam and unwanted activity. Any user can also send a message to a special “Saved Messages” chat as a form of bookmarking them.
- Users can use Telegram’s transparency bot to check how many legal requests from their country it has processed.
- The revenue of these advertisements is shared with the channel owner in form of Telegram’s Toncoin crypto currency.
- Premium users get access to additional settings, like instant chat translation, and the ability to restrict who can send them text and voice messages.
- Volodymyr Flents, the chairman of the public organization “Electronic Democracy”, announced on 11 May 2020 that a Telegram bot appeared on the Web, which sold the personal data of Ukrainian citizens.
- 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.
- It gave me fast access to chats and uninterrupted group management without needing to install anything.
Telegram also provides an open API for the creation of custom bots which can perform various tasks, integrate other services into Telegram chats, or work as mini apps or games. Both in Secret and regular chats, messages can self-destruct after they are read, disappearing for all parties after a period set by the user, ranging from one day to one year. Whether I was checking messages, accessing group chats, or managing multiple accounts, the experience was smooth and reliable. Even though this comes at the cost of convenience, Olvid has appealed to users wishing to have limited data exposure and stay out of centralized identity systems. Olvid does not have big channels, bots, or extensive social features but deals with small-group, private conversations. The National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine enforced the restrictions following evidence reported to them by Kyrylo Budanov, showing Russia’s ability to access messages and user data on the platform.
- Learn about personal, business, and creator accounts and how to optimize them for client acquisition.
- The gateway sends users’ Telegram name, username, and profile picture to the website owner, while users’ phone number remains hidden.
- Hundreds of pages of a group chat between Rosselló and members of his staff were leaked.
- The order came following a complaint from media organizations —Mediaset, Atresmedia and Movistar Plus+— saying the app allowed users to share copyrighted content without their consent.
- The gateway sends the user’s Telegram name, username, and profile picture to the website owner, while the user’s phone number remains hidden.
- 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.
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. They criticized how, unless modified first, the default general security model stores all contacts, messages and media together with their decryption keys on its servers continuously; and that it does not enable end-to-end encryption for messages by default. Along with the shared photographs, anonymous accounts shared the women’s private information, including phone numbers and social media profiles, encouraging members of the group to contact the women and ask for sexual favors.
Telegram has public APIs with which developers can access the same functionality as Telegram’s official apps to build their own instant messaging applications. It is automatically updated and will most likely get new versions faster than the apps in the Play Store and App Store. 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.