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Telegram Now Seeing 12B Daily Messages, Up from 1B in February
- mtgx 11y agoSo does the NSA (Telegram is still not encrypted end-to-end by default, lest we forget).
- newman314 11y agoI thought Telegram had security issues beyond that as in non validated crypto?
- sdoering 11y agoDidn't they offer a bounty for anyone braking their crypto? I am not sure - but thought I heard something like that.
- superuser2 11y agoYes, which is exactly why you should not trust it. Bounties are no substitute for an audit by professional (or academic) security researchers, and if the expected value of exploiting the vulnerability (i.e. to the NSA) is greater than the bounty payout, the person who discovers it would do better to sit on the information. From 1998: https://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram/archives/1998/1215.html https://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram/archives/1998/1215.html
- sdoering 11y agoThanks for pointing that out. Wasn't aware of this line of very valid reasoning. Kudos and hat tip.
- MichaelGG 11y agoYet it's the only user-friendly, "full featured" messaging app that offers an E2E option. I'm not a fan of Telegram. Their custom crypto and arrogance while seemingly denying any issues doesn't inspire confidence. Yet I have not found another option that's friendly enough to get other users to sign up for. I tried TextSecure/Signal, but message deliverability wasn't reliable enough, and it lacks things like sending voice messages. It feels less polished than Telegram, which impacts users wanting to use it.
- qznc 11y agoI don't use Telegram, but Threema seems "full featured" enough for me. It is proprietary though. It is what I recommend to friends until TextSecure/Signal is good enough.
- danieldk 11y agoThe problem is that most of my family and friends won't pay for a messaging app. Messaging apps are seen as something that is (always) free. So, the incentive to switch from Facebook Chat, Hangouts, or Whatsapp to Threema is near zero. Although I haven't pushed any messaging app, at least some of my friends are on Telegram.
- superuser2 11y agoiMessage is pretty user-friendly, "full-featured," and end-to-end encrypted for those inside the Apple ecosystem.
- slasaus 11y ago> “If you have WhatsApp on your phone and your battery’s low and your phone goes dead, suddenly you can’t get access to your messages. It’s over. It’s not cross device. It doesn’t have cross-device sync. You can’t send documents or big media. There are lots of limitations in the group chats, in your communication. It’s not private. So I’m not sure I was a big fan of WhatsApp about three years ago, and I’m not sure I am now,” he said. Unfortunately, E2E encrypted chat doesn't work when using these multi-device features, and so most contacts of mine don't use the privacy or security features of Telegram.
- izacus 11y agoHow doesn't it work? Having a shared passphrase would work just fine - and it wouldn't even be more complex UX wise. Not being able to receive WhatsApp messages on two devices is one of the major annoyances with having browser tethered to the phone being the second in line. Especially when you have flakey wifi on the phone it gets really unbearable.
- superuser2 11y agoIt can; Apple's approach is to distribute lists of public keys instead of single ones. The seem to have the same threat profile: Apple can be compelled to silently add a public key to the keybag; Telegram can probably be compelled to silently replace a public key with an MITMed version.
- slasaus 11y agoYou're right and I believe WhisperSystems is doing something similar (or was at least working on it last year when I spoke with one of the developers). I vaguely remember them claiming that group chat is about the same as multi-device, cryptography-wise. I specifically meant Telegrams E2E implementation. Apart from other problems with it [1] the fact that it's not on by default, as others have stated, makes that most people (especially non-technical users) don't use it. [1] https://github.com/zhukov/webogram/issues/126#issuecomment-127982342 https://github.com/zhukov/webogram/issues/126#issuecomment-1...
- StavrosK 11y ago
- gobengo 11y agoHow many are from bots?
- kristofferR 11y agoThat's a good point, Telegram launched their bot API in June: https://telegram.org/blog/bot-revolution https://telegram.org/blog/bot-revolution
- cordite 11y agoI have not witnessed any bots, or at least the kinds that randomly send contact requests or messages like MSN/Skype/Kik
- ubercow 11y agoI've gotten most of my friends to switch to Telegram from Hangouts and SMS. Love all the features, especially group chats.
- noja 11y agoWhy? Group chats aren't encrypted. What's the advantage?
- tpinto 11y agoIt's a beautiful app with features being added every month or so. It really feels like the people behind this care. I've also managed to move most of my (at least the tech-savvy) friends from Messenger/SMS/WhatsApp to Telegram.
- gattilorenz 11y agoAccess from multiple devices, lightweight client (hangouts is quite a resource hog on older devices), free (as in free beer for the protocol and free software for the client).
- wingerlang 11y agoI've only ever heard people mention encryption on sites like HN etc. Do you guys think the normal IM user (vast vast majority) care in the slightest about encryption? Not trying to sound snarky.
- noja 11y agoTelegram was sold as the "secure messaging app".
- wingerlang 11y agoOk, did not know that. I do wonder if the majority of the users use it for that, or if they followed the early adopters that, obviously, care about that.
- 11y ago
- dombili 11y agoTelegram is a pro-privacy app? In what universe?
- JupiterMoon 11y agoIt is an illusion of privacy app.
- dombili 11y agoYeah, which is worse because it creates a false sense of security.
- superlupo 11y agoWhy not use TextSecure/Signal? It's now available on iOS and Android, is open source and encrypted by default. I've tried Telegram, but only 1-on-1-chats could be encrypted, and also only optional.
- Arnt 11y agoPerhaps because the lag is a bit of a pain. I use textsecure. Sometimes messages arrive nine hours late.
- infruset 11y agoReally? My experience has been that for some reason, on some phones, messages are only downloaded when the app is opened, which is really annoying but seems to be an interaction-with-the-OS issue rather than a networking issue. However, messages are always sent and received immediately on phones without this issue (still in my experience).
- Arnt 11y agoOn my phone (a Nexus 5 running CM), messages arrive promptly on most days, but on some days they only arrive when I open TS. On my wife's phone (different brand) they mostly arrive only she opens TS. But that's a digression. The point of my comment was that this experience can be rather a turnoff if you happen to notice it really soon after your first install. It's easy to believe that a whole group of people is turned off by one member's negative first experience.
- superuser2 11y agoiMessage, Facebook Messenger, Google Hangouts, and plain old XMPP all let me switch to my laptop keyboard when my thumbs get tired. That's table stakes in the messaging game. Until the promised browser extension is released, Signal is as worthless to me as Whatsapp.
- sz4kerto 11y agoBecause Telegram supports many more platforms. I'm using Telegram on Linux (terminal client), Windows, Windows Phone. My wife uses the web client. Other friends use Android and iOS clients. For messaging apps, platform support is crucial.
- yojo 11y agoI'm surprised by these numbers. 60m monthly actives generating 12bn messages per day. So on average each active user sends 200 messages every day. That seems astoundingly high. Can someone more familiar with engagement metrics for this type of service comment?
- Arnt 11y agoThat probably means people use group chat. Suppose five people chat for a minute. 20-30 lines of text sent to four people (5 minus the sender) equals 80-120 countable messages. And if Telegram users act like on some old IRC channels, and have long-running chat sessions that most attendees don't pay attention to, you can get thousands per day per user.
- reddotX 11y agoi have 5 active group chats (i had to turn off notifications for telegram on Ubuntu Phone because of this)
- yojo 11y agoGot it. I was approaching it from messages sent, not messages received. I wonder if they are also counting messages received per device, rather than user. E.g. If I have a phone, a tablet, and a desktop, does every message I receive count triple for this metric?
- anc84 11y agoThey might also include presence messaging to inflate their numbers.
- Arnt 11y agoUnlikely; people's presence wobbliness may have grown since February, but by a factor of 12? Nah. I have a feeling that the main change may have been a better UI on the group chat.
- umangd 11y agoI am pretty sure they are including automated bot messages in the 12bn value. No way average user messages is 200 a day.
- z1x2 11y agoI use Telegram daily and like it very much, but one thing has bothered me for so long, that there is no meaningful way to search through messages in a language like Chinese. It looks that they only allow search with words, not in characters within words. It is so arrogant for them to ignore this for so long after users brought up the issue.