The California-based secure messaging program may be popular in the wake of the riots in the U.S. Capitol, but another messaging program, Telegram, is also seeing an increase in users.
According to Reuters, referring to data from Apptopia, the Telegram app was downloaded 5.6 million times worldwide from Wednesday to Sunday.
Like Signal, Telegram allows users to send texts, videos and audio or video messages with 256-bit symmetric AES encryption. It is, according to the company’s profile, ‘one of the top ten apps in the world’ with over 500 million active users.
The website of the Telegram messaging app will be seen on a computer screen in Beijing on Thursday 13 June 2019. (AP Photo / Andy Wong)
WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT SIGN, THE SAFE MESSAGE APP RISING IN POPULAR
Telegram, founded by Russian entrepreneurs and brothers Nikolai and Pavel Durov, also does not earn money through advertising, unlike other social networks, adding that it will never give third parties access to user data.
In an April blog post announcing the video call feature, Telegram, which insulted the Securities and Exchange Commission after a cryptocurrency sale went awry, said more features and improvements, including group video calls, in the future sou kom.
“All video calls are protected with end-to-end encryption,” Telegram wrote in the blog post in Dubai. “To confirm your connection, compare the four emojis displayed on the screen for you and your chat buddy. If they match, your call is 100% secured by time-tested encryption that is also used in Telegram’s secret conversations and voice calls.”
The company has largely benefited because WhatsApp, a similarly secure messaging app owned by Facebook, has experienced a decline in users, likely caused by new privacy terms.
The new provisions, which came into effect recently, now state that WhatsApp can share certain information with Facebook, Instagram and Messenger. Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, on Tuesday attempted to defend the changes.
“The policy update * does not * in any way affect the privacy of your messages with friends or family,” Mosseri tweeted. “The changes relate to a message to a business on WhatsApp, which is optional.”
It seems that Telegram favors the reason for this, and the popular meme tweeted with two Spiderman costumes pointing at each other, with the faces replaced by Facebook and WhatsApp.
But as with Signal, there may be restrictions on using Telegram to send encrypted messages. The end-to-end encryption may be restricted if one of the parties does not use Telegram.
The app has also been scrutinized for its user base. In 2017, Telegram was possibly one of the sources of communication related to the suicide bombing that killed 22 people at the end of an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England.
Fox News reached out to Telegram with a request for comment.
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