In March 2018, cloud-based mobile messaging app Telegram reported 200 million monthly active users worldwide. Telegram is a chat app focused on user privacy, message encryption and delivery speed.

Telegram

In 2013, Telegram was launched by the brothers Nikolai and Pavel Durov. The pair had previously founded the Russian social network VK, which they left when it was taken over by the Mail.ru Group. As of April 2019, Telegram ranked among the leading mobile messenger apps worldwide. The app is not particularly popular in the United States, reaching only 1.4 percent of U.S. mobile audiences in October 2018. However, Telegram has been making inroads in many European markets and is one of the most frequently used mobile messaging apps in Germany.

Telegram security criticism

Despite claiming to be more secure than other mainstream messengers such as LINE or Whatsapp, Telegram has been frequently criticized by industry experts such as German consumer organization Stiftung Warentest or the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). One of the key points of criticism is Telegram’s failure to provide automatic end-to-end encryption (WhatsApp and LINE messenger have end-to-end encryption set up by default). The company has also promised to release the coding for all its applications so security specialists could verify that it is working correctly and handling user data in a secure manner. However, as of May 2019 Telegram has failed to publish the server-side code for auditing.