The gateway sends the user’s Telegram name, username, and profile picture to the website owner, while the user’s phone number remains hidden. It features a website widget that can be embedded into websites, allowing users to sign into a third party website with their Telegram account. These platforms also enable businesses to add Telegram chat widget to their websites and gives them the option to automate conversations or let human agents reply. In April 2021, the Payments 2.0 upgrade enabled bot payments within any chat, using third-party services such as Sberbank, Tranzoo, Payme, CLICK, LiqPay and ECOMMPAY to process the credit card information. To activate an inline bot, a user must type the bot’s username and a query in the message field. The Dutch website Tweakers reported that an invited bot can potentially read all group messages, when the bot controller changes the access settings silently at a later point in time.
Stickers are cloud-based, high-resolution images intended to provide more expressive emoji. The gateway is integrated with a bot, which is linked with the developer’s specific website domain. Bots power Telegram’s gaming platform, which utilizes HTML5, so games are loaded on-demand as needed, like ordinary webpages. When a user chooses to hide their profile photo, they can set an alternative “Public Profile Picture” that will be shown instead. Hiding the status obfuscates the exact time the user was online and hides the statuses of other people respectively. In April 2025, Telegram launched secure group calls with end-to-end encryption by using blockchain-like encryption technology.
- North Macedonia President Stevo Pendarovski and Prime Minister Zoran Zaev demanded an immediate response from Telegram and threatened to completely restrict access to the app in the country if no action was taken.
- In December 2019, Bloomberg News moved their messenger-based newsletter service from WhatsApp to Telegram after the former banned bulk and automated messaging.
- These collectible gifts are registered on the TON blockchain as a form of NFT and can then be traded or sold both on the Telegram platform via the in-app Gift Marketplace or via outside platforms and marketplaces.
- The National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine enforced the restrictions following evidence reported to them by Kyrylo Budanov, showing Russia’s ability to access messages and user data on the platform.
- In almost every case, reopening the Telegram mobile app on my phone triggered the code to arrive immediately.
- DICloak keeps each account’s data totally separate, which also adds an important layer of privacy and security, especially when handling client or business communications.
- Telegram Web Login allows users to access their Telegram account through any modern web browser.
User numbers
On 12 June 2019, Telegram confirmed that it suffered a denial-of-service attack which disrupted normal app functionality for approximately one hour. The Telegram team tweeted that it was either because the user had malware or they were not using two-step verification. The hypothesis is that either mobile devices were hacked by SIM swap or the targets’ computers were compromised.
Pavel Durov has said that Telegram users in “troubled countries” should enable two-factor authentication by creating passwords in order to prevent this. Login SMS messages are known to have been intercepted in Iran, Russia and Germany, possibly in coordination with phone or telecom companies. In April 2016, several Russian opposition members’ accounts were hijacked by intercepting the SMS messages used for login authorization.
Telegram made substantial efforts to ban illegal content such as child abuse and pro-terrorist channels, including a partnership with Europol to eliminate IS presence on the platform, but communities of far-right extremist users are still on the app. Telegram allows groups, bots and channels with a verified social media or Wikipedia page to be verified, but not individual user accounts. The same year, Telegram reportedly banned more than 350,000 bots and channels, including those that contained child abuse and terrorism-related content. Users can import chat history, including both messages and media, from WhatsApp, Line, and KakaoTalk due to data portability, making a new chat to hold the messages or adding them to an existing one. Telegram content is synced between users’ logged-in devices automatically through cloud storage, except for device-specific secret chats. Telegram’s FAQ page says it does not process requests related to illegal content in chats and group chats, and that “to this day, we have disclosed 0 bytes of user messages to third parties, including governments”.
shutdown of Russian political bots
In March 2014, Telegram promised that “all code will be released eventually”, including all the various client applications (Android, iOS, desktop, etc.) and the server-side code. In 2018, Telegram sent a message to all Iranian users stating that the Telegram Talai and Hotgram Kiekka Casino unofficial clients are not secure. In June 2017, Pavel Durov in an interview said that U.S. intelligence agencies tried to bribe the company’s developers to weaken Telegram’s encryption or install a backdoor during their visit to the U.S. in 2016.
Using Your Phone Number
Since 2017, Telegram users have been able to initiate one-on-one calls in private chats. Similarly, groups and channels can have content protection enabled, which prevents screenshots, forwarding and downloading of media. Premium users have the ability to set any chat folder as the default screen in the app while regular users will always see the full chat list when first opening the app.
Users are responsible for ensuring that their use of multiple Telegram accounts complies with Telegram’s Terms of Service. This means you’re forced to constantly log out and back in, which is a major workflow disruption for anyone managing separate accounts for business, personal use, or client projects. This confirmed that even when managing multiple accounts, the core interface remains stable. It’s important to be aware of the web version’s limitations, which primarily revolve around advanced security and device-specific features.
- Secret Chats support perfect forward secrecy and switch encryption keys after a key has been used 100 times or a week has passed.
- The editorial staff was made aware of the advertisement by a Telegram user and the online magazine Übermedien.
- It asks users to upload their own official documents such as passport, identity card, driver license, etc.
- The article also highlights the importance of being active in the game and running Z nodes for enhanced security and governance.
- In August 2022, Telegram launched an emoji platform where users could upload their own custom emoji, either in animated or static versions.
- Telegram allows groups, bots and channels with a verified social media or Wikipedia page to be verified, but not individual user accounts.
- The optional paid subscription gives users increased limits in the app, such as larger file uploads, faster download speeds, unlimited voice message transcription, as well as numerous other increases such as the number of pinned chats and folders.
Telegram suggests speed of message delivery, even on slow connections, and synchronization of chats across devices. Some use it in the form of a basic chat program; there are those who build communities, file sharing, or even bots. In a later blog post, Durov directly stated that the block was a result of pressure from Google and Apple as refusal to comply with their policies would result “in an immediate shutdown of Telegram for millions of users”. The messages were considered vulgar, racist, and homophobic, with members of the chat discussing how they would use the media to target potential political opponents. Andriy Kovalenko, head of the security council’s centre on countering disinformation, clarified that the ban was limited to official devices and did not extend to personal phones.
How to Use Telegram Web Login: A Complete 2025 Guide
In February 2018, Telegram launched their social login feature to its users, named Telegram Login. In July 2025, Telegram partnered with the rapper and media figure Snoop Dogg to release a set of limited edition collectible gifts alongside his music video “Gifts”. As of 2023, Telegram Premium can be acquired via in-app purchases facilitated by Apple and Google, directly via Telegram’s @PremiumBot, or with cryptocurrency on the Fragment platform.
Telegram also provides an open API for the creation of custom bots which can perform various tasks, integrate other services into Telegram chats, or work as mini apps or games. Both in Secret and regular chats, messages can self-destruct after they are read, disappearing for all parties after a period set by the user, ranging from one day to one year. Whether I was checking messages, accessing group chats, or managing multiple accounts, the experience was smooth and reliable. Even though this comes at the cost of convenience, Olvid has appealed to users wishing to have limited data exposure and stay out of centralized identity systems. Olvid does not have big channels, bots, or extensive social features but deals with small-group, private conversations. The National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine enforced the restrictions following evidence reported to them by Kyrylo Budanov, showing Russia’s ability to access messages and user data on the platform.
A distinctive feature of this version is the ability to view channels/groups on a specific topic without censorship, which cannot be viewed from an app distributed from Google Play or the Apple Store due to their policies.citation needed For encrypted chats (branded as Secret Chats), Telegram uses a custom-built symmetric encryption scheme called MTProto. In October 2024, Telegram launched a verification platform, called Telegram Gateway, allowing third-party services to authenticate their users by sending verification codes via Telegram. In December 2020, Telegram launched a Bugs and Suggestions platform, where users can submit bug reports and suggestion cards for new features. The gateway sends users’ Telegram name, username, and profile picture to the website owner, while users’ phone number remains hidden. Telegraph natively supports Instant View, a feature which lets users read full articles in the chat with no load time and without opening an external browser.
Users with a Telegram Premium subscription have a number of “boosts” that they can give to channels, which allow the channel to “level up” and unlock features, such as the ability to customize messages or post stories as the channel. When forwarded, polls retain the answer data and any votes cast in other chats will count toward the overall total. Users can freely join public chats and find them using the in-app search function, while private chats require an invitation. Groups are large multi-user chats that support up to 200,000 members and can be public or private. Secret Chats restrict screenshotting by Android devices and warn when one is taken on an iOS device, while also hiding the chat contents from the final image. Telegram messages in private chats can be edited for up to 48 hours; an “edited” icon indicates changes.
In November 2025, Telegram began using an auction-based system for new sets of collectible gifts and partnered with Khabib Nurmagomedov and with the UFC for two limited-edition releases. Specific limited-edition gifts can be upgraded to a collectible version, unlocking a random appearance and other attributes. In September 2021, Telegram added interactive emoji, a type of animated emoji which also play a fullscreen effect in the chat. When typing in an emoji, the user is offered to send the respective sticker instead.