What Is Telegram.org?
Telegram (telegram.org) is a messaging platform that focuses on speed and security. It allows its users to send unlimited messages, videos, secret chats, photos, and files of any kind of up to 2GB each. Further, Telegram users can create groups of up to 200,000 people, and channels, which enable users to broadcast messages to an unlimited audience with an option for the broadcast to have a permanent URL. Telegram differs from other messaging platforms in that it is cloud-based and can be used from different devices at the same time because of its seamless sync feature. According to Telegram, the usage of MTProto, which provides custom-built symmetric encryption in two layers: Client-Server encryption for cloud chats and end-to-end encryption for secret chats, makes the messaging platform a more secure option than other comparable services.
According to Similarweb, as of February 2023, the site telegram.org receives approximately 247.1 million monthly views. The Wayback Machine estimates that the site telegram.org was founded on October 2, 2003. However, as per Telegram’s history, the messaging platform was launched for IOS on August 14, 2013, and subsequently for Android on October 20, 2013. Telegram was created by Pavel Durov, who is also the founder of the social network VK, and his older brother Nikolai Durov, a programmer and mathematician who developed the MTProto protocol for Telegram’s security. Telegram’s traffic quickly rose after its release and has had a roaring growth ever since, with over 700 million active users. There is no doubt why it has become one of the 10 most downloaded apps globally.
Is Telegram.org Safe?
I conducted a series of malware tests to find out if telegram.org is safe and legit. Here are the results:
I installed the Malwarebytes Browser Guard on my Edge browser and was able to browse the site telegram.org without any issues.
To check this further I ran malware scans with Malwarebytes and Spybot on my computer after browsing the site telegram.org and they returned no malware detection. I also ran a system-wide scan with Microsoft Defender and no malware was found.
To try to confirm that the site is clean, I also checked the site telegram.org on the online malware scanner Sucuri and it returned with no issues. You can see the same here: https://sitecheck.sucuri.net/results/https/telegram.org
Telegram.org was given a low security risk grade by Sucuri. No malware, injected spam, defacements or internal server errors were detected during its scan. Further the site was not blacklisted on any of 9 blacklists checked.
Some hardening improvements can be made by installing a website firewall to protect against hacks and solving the missing security headers as follows:
No website application firewall detected. Please install a cloud-based WAF to prevent website hacks and DDoS attacks.
Missing security header to prevent Content Type sniffing.
Missing Content-Security-Policy directive. We recommend to add the following CSP directives (you can use default-src if all values are the same): script-src, object-src, base-uri, frame-src
Default server banners displayed. Your site is displaying your web server default banners.
I also ran a parasite scan with Unmask Parasites on the site telegram.org and it determines that the page seems to be clean. You can see the same here: https://unmask.sucuri.net/security-report/?page=telegram.org
Lastly, I ran a malware scan with VirusTotal on the domain telegram.org and none of the 90 security vendors have flagged the domain as malicious. You can see the same here: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/domain/telegram.org
In conclusion, the site telegram.org was graded as a low security risk with no detected malware according to Sucuri. Furthermore, it is clean of parasites and none of the 99 security vendors associated with Sucuri and VirusTotal have deemed the site as malicious.