Since WhatsApp's new privacy policy has come under the radar, huge numbers of users decided to use Telegram as the company announced that it has surpassed over 500 million users.
In his channel, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov said that the application received 25 million new users in the last 72 hours. Users have migrated to Signal and Telegram as ambiguity around WhatsApp’s new privacy policy refused to settle.
“In the first week of January, the application surpassed 500 million monthly active users. After that it kept growing: 25 million new users joined the application in the last 72 hours alone. These new users came from across the globe 38% from Asia, 27% from Europe, 21% from Latin America, and 8% from MENA. This is a significant increase compared to last year when 1.5M new users signed up every day. We've had surges of downloads before, throughout our 7-year history of protecting user privacy. But this time is different,” Durov shared on his Telegram channel.
Durov added: “People no longer want to exchange their privacy for free services. They no longer want to be held hostage by tech monopolies that seem to think they can get away with anything as long as their apps have a critical mass of users. Unlike other popular apps, Telegram doesn’t have shareholders or advertisers to report to. We don’t do deals with marketers, data miners or government agencies. Since the day we launched in August 2013 we haven’t disclosed a single byte of our users' private data to third parties.”
Telegram sent a message to its users thanking them saying: "These milestones were made possible by users like you who invite their friends to Telegram."
The message also asked its old users to welcome their friends who newly joined the app. "If you have contacts that joined in the last few days, you can welcome them using one of Telegram’s unique features, such as an animated sticker or a video message," the message said.
It witnessed a surge in users after WhatsApp updated its privacy policy. With little clarity over what the new policies mean, users across the globe cut chords with WhatsApp and migrated to other messaging apps that appeared to be more secure than WhatsApp.
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