Why Telegram?

Disclaimer: Not my personal views. The author wishes to remain anonymous.

Recently we have seen multiple instant messaging systems  coming into the scene like Telegram, Whatsapp, Hike, etc.  Users are often confused regarding choice of messenger and often go with the one which is most popular in their social circle(and it is generally Whatsapp). But the most popular choice may not be the best and there are strong reasons why people should move to Telegram and convince their friends to do the same. Some of these reasons are:-

• Telegram is Open source and hence more secure and trustworthy : The client side of telegram is open source and this offers greater degree of confidence than proprietary softwares and “freewares” as the source code is open for examination by anyone. This reduces chances of any major bugs impacting security of the code. In general, Open Source is less likely to have back-doors due to availability of source code to the public, whereas proprietary softwares (including those by tech giants) in past have included back-doors for surveillance purposes. Telegram has offered huge monetary rewards to detecting any security or cryptography related vulnerabilities and thus takes advantage of transparency and community to enhance security. 

• Telegram offers end-to-end encryption and self-destruct feature for paranoids  : If you are concerned that your messages may be monitored by Telegram people, you can opt for “secret chat” which is based on end-to-end encryption meaning that all intermediaries ,including telegram and internet service providers, see encrypted,incomprehensible messages which can be decrypted only by the end users involved in chats.

• Telegram is based in Germany in order to assure users of greater privacy: After Snowden revelations privacy has been a major concern for many users. Although Telegram's founder is  Russian, yet its servers and the entity is based in  Germany,where security and privacy laws are quite strong , to assure users of greater privacy. This offers greater assurance than entities based in US or Russia or anywhere else.

• Its Free and its free forever : Telegram is committed to always remain free forever and that too without any ads or anything. Whereas its competitors are unable to provide any similar assurance.

• Telegram supports larger range of Platforms

• Too much data with any single entity is undesirable : Whatsapp is now owned by Facebook, which has already been criticised a lot of being slack on privacy related issues. If it controls greater amount of data it may become one giant which may be difficult ,if not impossible, to control.