Review: What is Telegram? How Useful is it?

If you are someone who is so fond of cryptocurrency airdrops or maybe just have a lot of "side chicks", then for sure, you know a thing or two about Telegram.

I would say that I am still a new user of Telegram even though I first used the application like three years ago. I mean, Telegram was launched on 2013 so based on how I look at it, I can say I am pretty new.

Before we go ahead and dive in everything about Telegram, and also for the sake of people who does not have any idea on what Telegram is, lets take a look on what it is first.

What is Telegram? What do I do here?

Telegram is a messaging app with a focus on speed and security, it’s super-fast, simple and free. You can use Telegram on all your devices at the same time — your messages sync seamlessly across any number of your phones, tablets or computers. Telegram has over 500 million monthly active users and is one of the 10 most downloaded apps in the world.

With Telegram, you can send messages, photos, videos and files of any type (doc, zip, mp3, etc), as well as create groups for up to 200,000 people or channels for broadcasting to unlimited audiences. You can write to your phone contacts and find people by their usernames. As a result, Telegram is like SMS and email combined — and can take care of all your personal or business messaging needs. In addition to this, we support end-to-end encrypted voice and video calls, as well as voice chats in groups for thousands of participants.

Source: Telegram

So in Layman's term, its a messaging app. But its not just your ordinary messaging app. Unlike your beloved Facebook Messenger, Telegram has a lot more features to offer. The overall built of the app is just magnificent.

To the actual review, here we go!

GENERAL INFO

• Telegram is for anybody that desires efficient and easy communication and calls. Telegram is supported by Pavel Durov together with his brother Nikolai. As I mentioned, it was launched on 2013. There are a lot of improvements within its 8 years of existence. We can actually see the development of the application overtime. To those who doesn't know, Telegram is actually available for IOS devices only then eventually was adopted by Play Store. Currently, Telegram is available for Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Windows NT, macOS and Linux.

My thoughts:

In my three years of using it, I can testify that it really is a user friendly messaging app. Communicating with other people like your friends and family has never been so fast. Also, in my short time of using it, I did witness some changes within the app. It is not major changes but still, it did change. Another thing that I love is the fact that it can support 200,00 members in a group. I mean that's a lot of people. This is so beneficial for big companies and even for the smaller businesses.

The BASICS

• You can communicate to individuals who do have telegram contacts on your phone. Some other way to reach people is to input in the search box their Telegram username, so you don't need to know their cell number to do this.

• If you are worrying about random people contacting you, there is no need to. As long as they don't have your number that was linked to your account, you're good. But, there are cases where in people you don't know can send you a message like if the both of you are in the same group or if you set a public username. Although, there's still the block button as an option.

• Your phone contacts who have telegram are shows under the CONTACTS tab with pictures in each one.

• Inviting your friends is also is a nice feature that Telegram has. All you have to do is click the INVITE FRIENDS button in the app and choose how you would want the invitation to be sent.

• Secret Chats is one of the unique features of Telegram too. Its basically an end to end encrypted conversation that has an option to self destruct within a set time. I mean, how freaking cool is that?

My thoughts:

Its pretty basic to be honest. Its so much easier to use if you'll ask me. Comparing it to other messaging apps that needs super fast data connection, Telegram is way up to the top. I love the extra features it has. Its just too cool.

SECURITY

Lets take a look on how Telegram describes their Security measures.

Q: How secure is Telegram?

Telegram is more secure than mass market messengers like WhatsApp and Line. We are based on the MTProto protocol (see description and advanced FAQ), built upon time-tested algorithms to make security compatible with high-speed delivery and reliability on weak connections. We are continuously working with the community to improve the security of our protocol and clients.

Q: So how do you encrypt data?

We support two layers of secure encryption. Server-client encryption is used in Cloud Chats (private and group chats), Secret Chats use an additional layer of client-client encryption. All data, regardless of type, is encrypted in the same way — be it text, media or files.

Our encryption is based on 256-bit symmetric AES encryption, 2048-bit RSA encryption, and Diffie–Hellman secure key exchange.

Q: Why should I trust you?

Telegram is open, anyone can check our source code, protocol and API, see how everything works and make an informed decision. Telegram supports verifiable builds, which allow experts to independently verify that our code published on GitHub is the exact same code that is used to build the apps you download from App Store or Google Play.

We welcome security experts to audit our system and appreciate any feedback at security@telegram.org.

On top of that, Telegram's primary focus is not to bring a profit, so commercial interests will never interfere with our mission.

Source: Telegram

My thoughts:

In those three years of using Telegram, I did not experience any attempt of being hacked or anything. I do not know about you but I do agree in the claim of Telegram that they are more secure than Whatsapp and LINE basing it to my experiences. Also, they are publicly allowing users to check their source codes, protocols. and API. Their transparency with regards to these information is commendable.

Conclusion:

I do recommend the use of Telegram. If you want to feel the ease of communicating to other people, the messaging app for you is Telegram.