This is similar to Signal messenger, which also requires a phone number to use the service. Installing Telegram on an Android phone involves downloading the app and registering your phone number.

Since Telegram focuses on the mobile experience and requires you to join the service using a mobile device before you can use a browser or Desktop app, we’ll concentrate on the mobile side of things first. Telegram messenger hands-on testingįor purposes of this Telegram review, I used the Telegram mobile app for Android, along with the Windows Desktop app. This is in contrast to some of the other popular secure messenger services.Īs we noted in both the Wire review and the Signal review, these encrypted messaging apps have undergone formal third-party audits. Nonetheless, we were not able to find any formal security audit or analysis that was conducted by a cybersecurity firm. Telegram told us in an email that, “Multiple researchers and security experts have analyzed Telegram’s encryption.” As an example, the provided a paper from two researchers in Italy who examined the MTProto 2.0, as you can see here.

Those Telegram servers are located throughout the world as part of a distributed network. This allows you to balance your desire for privacy against the need for data storage space. However, you can remove data from this local cache, and store it on Telegram’s servers. By default, all your message data is stored on your devices. Telegram has a hybrid system for storing your data. The company is funded through a donation by Pavel. The company is headquartered in London, with the development team based in Dubai. With over 500 million active users, it is one of the most popular messaging apps in the world. Telegram Messenger was created by brothers Nikolai and Pavel Durov in 2013.

Telegram apps for Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Mac OS, Windows, Linux, popular browsersįor this review, we downloaded and tested Telegram desktop and mobile apps.

Code for the open source parts is available on GitHub.

Here are some key features to consider when deciding whether Telegram is right for you: Now we’ll briefly touch on the main features of Telegram messenger.

May be sharing data with government agencies.

Logs IP Address and other user data (use a good VPN service).

Telegram web