Let’s look at some of the reasons you might want to step away from Telegram. Not all of them will apply to everyone, but it’s good to know the weaknesses in each app you rely on.
1. Telegram Chats Aren’t End-to-End Encrypted by Default
If you’re not too familiar with Telegram, you might assume that all your chats are protected with end-to-end encryption, like they are on WhatsApp and Signal. But this isn’t the case.
Telegram does encrypt your messages as they travel between your device and the Telegram server. However, these messages sit on the server so you can access them from multiple devices. A breach of Telegram’s servers could thus result in your messages being exposed.
The service offers end-to-end encryption in its secret chats, but you have to start these manually. If you forget to start one, or someone else begins a non-secret chat with you, it doesn’t enjoy the same privacy protections.
2. Telegram Collects Your Contact Data
By default, Telegram collects basic data about the contacts on your phone. The company says it does this to notify you when someone you know signs up for Telegram and to show their name in the service. When someone you know joins Telegram, you’ll see the name you have saved for the contact, not their Telegram screen name.
While Telegram only stores the first and last name and phone number of your contacts, this is still a bit concerning for an app that’s focused on privacy. Also, getting a notification every time a friend joins the app is a pain, especially if you have most other notifications turned off.
Telegram also uses phone numbers to figure out which of your contacts know the most Telegram users, as the Telegram Privacy Policy states:
3. No Individual Read Receipts in Group Chats
If you use a messaging app for a lot of group chats, Telegram lacks a handy feature that might be a deal-breaker. While Telegram group chats do include read receipts, they don’t keep track of each person who has read your message.
Instead, as soon as one member of the group has opened a message, two checks will appear. There’s no way to be sure who hasn’t seen the message yet, aside from using people’s Last Seen status to infer who hasn’t opened the app in a while. Depending on what you use group chats for, this might cause you to jump to another app.
4. Telegram Has Limited Support
Hopefully, you won’t ever have a problem with Telegram that requires you to contact a support team.
If you have deeper problems with the app, getting ahold of someone who actually works at the company could be tough. This isn’t a huge knock against Telegram, but it could be a concern for some.
5. Your Friends Might Not Use It
A lot of the potential reasons to avoid Telegram are related to usability, privacy, and security. But there’s another practical reason that’s easy to overlook: if your friends aren’t on Telegram, there’s not much point in using it.
You might be able to convince a few friends to make an account on Telegram to make a group chat with them, but that only goes so far. Most people won’t want to bother downloading a secondary messaging app just to talk to you when WhatsApp, iMessage, SMS, or whatever else they already use works fine for their needs.
Telegram still has some value if you use it alone; check out the best Telegram channels to join to see how. But any messenger is a lot better when you can talk to most of your friends in one place.
6. Ads and a Subscription Plan
Apps like Telegram have to make money somehow, especially as they scale to serve hundreds of millions of users. Most of the time, apps introduce monetization by showing ads, and Telegram is no exception.
In late 2021 and early 2022, Telegram started rolling out ads in its app. These ads do not appear in one-on-one messages or group chats. Instead, they are limited to public channels with more than 1,000 followers, and only appear in certain regions. See the differences between Telegram groups and channels if you aren’t familiar.
While these ads are non-intrusive and privacy-conscious, they’re still annoying to see in what was once a totally free app.
In June 2022, Telegram introduced Telegram Premium, an optional subscription service that gives you extra goodies. These include doubling the file size upload limit, providing unique stickers, letting you create more folders to organize your chats, and removing ads.
At $5/month, Telegram Premium isn’t worth it for most people. But it’s annoying that the app locks some handy features behind a paywall, especially compared to other messaging apps that don’t include ads or any subscriptions.
7. Miscellaneous Telegram Concerns
We’ve looked at some of the major reasons you might want to step away from Telegram above. There are a few other minor considerations to keep in mind, including:
While this is up to personal preference, some people complain that Telegram’s interface isn’t visually pleasing. Telegram supports custom themes, though, which should take care of any problems here. You can only sign up with a mobile phone number; there’s no option to sign up with just an email address, or something else. This might be a roadblock for you.
It’s Up to You Whether to Use Telegram
This isn’t a list of reasons to convince you to immediately stop using Telegram. Rather, it’s a set of considerations you should keep in mind when you choose to use the service. Some of these points might be non-issues for you, or you can correct them with the right settings.
If you choose to leave Telegram, make sure you stick with a secure messaging app.
