Telegram

Is Telegram safe?

Less than its reputation suggests. Telegram is often described as a secure messenger, but its normal chats are stored on Telegram's servers with keys Telegram controls, and group chats are never end-to-end encryptedEnd-to-end encryptionEncryption in which only the sender and the recipient can read a message. The company running the service cannot see its content.More in the glossary. Its public channels are also one of the busiest places online for crypto fraud and illegal trade. We score it 52/100, well below Signal and WhatsApp.

If you want privacy from the company itself, Telegram is the wrong tool. If you want a feature-rich chat app that hides your phone number from strangers, it can be set up reasonably well.

Two kinds of chat

Telegram has "cloud chats" and "secret chats". The difference matters more than anything else on this page.

	Cloud chats (default)	Secret chats
Encryption	Device to server; Telegram holds keys	End to end (MTProto 2.0)
Groups	Yes, up to 200,000 members	No, one-to-one only
Sync across devices	Yes	No, tied to one phone
Desktop apps	Yes	Not on most desktop apps
Self-destruct timer	Optional	Optional

Most people never start a secret chat, so most Telegram messages can in principle be read by Telegram and handed over if it decides to. Telegram uses its own cryptographic protocol rather than the widely reviewed Signal Protocol, which cryptographers have long criticised, although no practical break of current MTProto has been shown.

What Telegram collects

Apple's privacy label shows no data used for tracking, and Telegram's sponsored messages in large channels are not targeted using personal data, according to the company. But the label does link a lot to you: precise location, contacts, name, phone number, payment information, purchase history and message content, photos and audio. Much of that is a side effect of cloud storage. Your chat history lives on Telegram's servers so you can open it on any device.

The Durov case and police cooperation

French police detained founder Pavel Durov at Le Bourget airport in August 2024. Investigating judges charged him with complicity in crimes carried out on the app, including the distribution of child sexual abuse material, drug trafficking and organised fraud, and with refusing to hand information to authorities. He denies the charges. His travel ban was lifted in November 2025, and the investigation was still open in 2026.

Within weeks of the arrest, Telegram updated its policy to say it would disclose the IP address and phone number of users who break its rules in response to valid legal requests. That matters for anyone who joined Telegram believing it would never cooperate.

Regulators elsewhere have also pushed. Australia's eSafety Commissioner fined Telegram A$957,780 in February 2025 after it answered a legal notice about terrorist and child abuse material 160 days late. Germany fined Telegram €5.125 million in 2022 under its online hate speech law, but a German district court later overturned the fine because it had been issued to the wrong company.

Scams on Telegram

Telegram's searchable public groups make it easy for scammers to find victims. Patterns to know:

• Fake "trading signal" or crypto pump groups where most members are bots.
• Impersonated customer support for exchanges and wallets, who ask for your seed phraseSeed phraseA list of 12 to 24 words that can restore a crypto wallet and all its funds. Anyone who has it controls the wallet.More in the glossary.
• Job scams that pay small amounts for "tasks" and then ask for a deposit.
• Fake copies of popular channels with names that differ by one letter.

Telegram marks some accounts with a "Scam" or "Fake" label, but plenty are never flagged.

How to set Telegram up more safely

1. Go to Settings > Privacy and Security > Phone Number. Set "Who can see my phone number" to Nobody and "Who can find me by my number" to My Contacts.
2. In the same menu, open Calls and set peer-to-peer to Nobody, so your IP address is not shared with the person you call.
3. Turn on Two-Step VerificationTwo-factor authenticationSigning in with a second proof of identity on top of your password, such as a code from an app, a security key or a passkey.More in the glossary with a password and recovery email.
4. Set Groups & Channels so only your contacts can add you.
5. For anything sensitive, start a secret chat from the contact's profile, or better, use Signal.

How we scored it

Scams and harmful content (32) is the weakest factor, followed by security (48) because end-to-end encryptionEnd-to-end encryptionEncryption in which only the sender and the recipient can read a message. The company running the service cannot see its content.More in the glossary is optional and missing for groups. Privacy (60) is helped by the absence of ad tracking. For gamers and community chats, compare Discord, which has similar moderation problems.