Given the pro-privacy stance of the platform, itโs taken as a given that itโll be used for a number of reasons, not all of them good. And Telegram has been attached to a fair few scandals related to terrorism, sexual exploitation and crime. Back in 2015, Vox described Telegram as โISISโ app of choice,โ saying that the platformโs real use is the ability to use channels to distribute material to large groups at once. Telegram has acted to remove public channels affiliated with terrorism, but Pavel Durov reiterated that he had no business snooping on private conversations. He said that since his platform does not have the capacity to check all channels, it may restrict some in Russia and Ukraine "for the duration of the conflict," but then reversed course hours later after many users complained that Telegram was an important source of information. Telegram boasts 500 million users, who share information individually and in groups in relative security. But Telegram's use as a one-way broadcast channel โ which followers can join but not reply to โ means content from inauthentic accounts can easily reach large, captive and eager audiences. In the United States, Telegram's lower public profile has helped it mostly avoid high level scrutiny from Congress, but it has not gone unnoticed. If you initiate a Secret Chat, however, then these communications are end-to-end encrypted and are tied to the device you are using. That means itโs less convenient to access them across multiple platforms, but you are at far less risk of snooping. Back in the day, Secret Chats received some praise from the EFF, but the fact that its standard system isnโt as secure earned it some criticism. If youโre looking for something that is considered more reliable by privacy advocates, then Signal is the EFFโs preferred platform, although that too is not without some caveats.
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