Telegram is unstable right now

European and Middle East users (DC2) are reporting Telegram being unstable, particularly, messages are getting delivered slowly.

UPD. 6PM UTC: Telegram servers are returning to stable state

#outages

Pavel Durov challenged the Signal founder's accusations in Telegram insecurity

Recently, Signal founder, Matthew Rosenfeld, stated on Twitter that Telegram is even less secure than WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, providing a lot of misconceptions as an argument.

Pavel Durov published a devastating post on his English-language Telegram channel to prove the safety of his messenger.

TGStat has started sending New Year's cards to Telegram channel owners

TGStat.com traditionally congratulates channel owners on the upcoming New Year with holiday cards on the final statistics of channels for 2021.

After the end of the mailing (in a couple of hours), anyone in the @TGStat_Bot bot will be able to receive the card. When the bot is ready for requests, we will notify you.

How to get a New Year's card from TGStat?

If you haven't received a newsletter from the bot:

Go to @TGStat_Bot and text:

— 2021 @username
and put in your channel username, e.g. 2021 @tginfo

— 2021 t.me/joinchat/AAAAAE1SE...
For private channels

You can share your postcards in the comments of this post.

Bot API was updated to version 5.6

— Improved support for Protected Content.
— Added the parameter protect_content to the methods sendMessage, sendPhoto, sendVideo, sendAnimation, sendAudio, sendDocument, sendSticker, sendVideoNote, sendVoice, sendLocation, sendVenue, sendContact, sendPoll, sendDice, sendInvoice, sendGame, sendMediaGroup, copyMessage, forwardMessage to allow sending messages with protected content to any chat.
— Added support for spoiler entities, which will work in Telegram versions released after December 30, 2021. Older clients will display unsupported message.
— Added new MessageEntity type “spoiler”.
— Added the ability to specify spoiler entities using HTML and MarkdownV2 formatting options.

See the full changelog for details on the official website.

#update #BotAPI

Reactions, spoilers, translation and QR codes

Telegram for Android, iOS, macOS and Unigram has been updated to version 8.4, Telegram Desktop — to version 3.4.

Reactions
• Double tap a message to send a quick 👍🏻 reaction.
• Press and hold a message for more reactions.
• Change your quick reaction emoji in Settings > Stickers and Emoji.
• Group and Channel admins can enable reactions in their chat via Chat Info > Edit > Reactions.

Spoilers
• Select text when typing and choose 'Spoiler' formatting to hide some or all of the contents of a message.
• Tap the spoiler animation in chat to reveal its hidden text.
• Spoiler formatting hides text in chat, as well as in the chat list and notifications.

Translation
• Turn on the Translation option in Settings > Languages.
• Press and hold a message to translate it into another language.

QR Codes
• Generate a custom QR Code that leads to your public t.me link.
• Tap the QR code icon in public profiles for groups, bots and channels to let someone quickly scan it with their device.

More about this update: https://telegram.org/blog/reactions-spoilers-translations

Android: Google Play, APK from official website or verified channel.
iOS: App Store.
Telegram Desktop: with official website or GitHub.
Telegram for macOS: from App Store or verified channel.
Unigram for Windows 10: Microsoft Store | Download | Installation help

#update #Android #iOS #Desktop #macOS #Unigram

Android Design Contest Results Announced

The task of the competition was to develop a complete and complete concept of voice and video calls - both between two users and in voice chats - for Telegram X on Android.

30 prize winners from all over the world shared $ 48,000.

Since none of the design concepts met the ideal submission criteria required for 1st place, no one was identified.

Detailed information about the winners, their awards and works can be view on the official Telegram channel of the contests.

All 30 winners of this competition were invited to take part in the second stage - to develop the main screens of the native Telegram application for Windows 11 (Unigram). More information - on the official channel of the Telegram contests.

#contest

Telegram Info is 6 years old!

The first post on the Russian channel was published 6 years ago. Over the past year, we have expanded our geography and now we write not only in Russian and English, but also in Spanish, Italian, French, German, Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, and in general, in more than 30 languages. See full list.

All the channels in different languages of the world are possible thanks to our volunteers from around the globe. If you would like to help translating news into your language and want to join our community — write to @infowritebot.

We continue to fight censorship in different countries. Our proxy server helps you to access up-to-date information regardless of local government bans.

Since 2018, we have been running our own website, where we help to explore Telegram's features, we support the platform with known messenger limits (available in 23 languages thanks to volunteers).

We also run a Beta Info channel about beta versions of the apps for our most loyal fans, and we continue to lead many other projects.

In 2022, we will not stop here, because we have you — our readers, for whom the @tginfoen team works.

#anniversary

Default Telegram Channel Administrator Rights You Should Know About

Recently, Telegram bots dev wrote (in Russian) about the problem in his own blog. So, any channel administrator (bot or user with minimal rights) can block the entire audience of the channel.

«At least this post was written so that you know that you cannot add all bots in a row to the channel, but only those you trust and whose creators have a reputation. I would also like the administration of the messenger to add separate rights for the ability to ban channel members with bots, as is done in groups. If possible, inform your friends' channel administrators about this», — the blog says.

All channel administrators can see the last 200 subscribers, the entire list of admins and recent actions in the channel, so it can also be considered the default rights.

Telegram Info editors warn: be careful and never add unverified bots or users to the list of administrators of your chat or channel.

Malicious software pretends to be a Telegram Desktop Installer

Minerva Lab, an Israel cyber security company, reported a new variant of the Purple Fox rootkit virus. This malicious software family was originally detected in 2018. Most of infected devices are used to infect more devices, or in DDoS attacks. The newfound variant pretends to be a Telegram Desktop installer that installs the mentioned rootkit in background.

The virus didn't affect the official Telegram downloads, it only spreads on unofficial websites. This incident serves as a reminder to download software only from official websites.

The only official downloads for Telegram Desktop are on the desktop.telegram.org website, Microsoft Store, Mac App Store and GitHub.

Telegram for Android builds don't match the source code

A developer of Nekogram, an unofficial Telegram app modification, complains Reproducible Builds are broken for the Android app. According to the developer, the issue persists for multiple versions in a row.

Telegram Info made a build by following the guide and confirms the statement: the produced APK files don't match official builds from Google Play and the official website.

Reproducible Builds allow you to stay sure the source code actually matches the distributed app from Google Play and the official website. If the builds match, it means the Telegram team has provided full source code and didn't add hidden functionality.

It's likely that Reproducible Builds were broken accidentally and will be fixed in future.

Telegram works on message translation through its own servers

The new API schema data on the Telegram website indicates that in future versions of the messenger, translations will be made through the Telegram servers. In the current version of the application, translation on iOS is done via Apple Translator, and on Android — by direct requests to Google Translate. The language of the message is detected on-device.

According to Durov's Code, Google Translate in Telegram for Android is used in a quirky way, with a workaround to not pay the service fee, as a temporary measure, while the messenger team is working on translation through their servers.

What technology will be used is still unknown. Language detection will most likely continue to be on-device.

Telegram fixed Reproducible Builds on Android

Earlier we reported that few latest versions of Telegram for Android couldn't be verified to be compiled from the official source code, since Reproducible Builds were broken by developers' mistake.

Version 8.4.3 fixes reproducibility: we were able to verify that installation packages for Telegram for Android from telegram.org and Google Play use the source code published in the official repository.

This means the Telegram developers didn't add any hidden functionality that would be missing in source code.

Database leak at @LivegramBot

Recently a popular feedback bot reported a database leak. The bot is commonly used for anonymous feedback to Telegram channel administrators. To protect the bots, all linked bot tokens will be revoked by the Telegram team.

To keep your bot working as before, you need to manually update the tokens for all Livegram bots in @BotFather and in @LivegramBot settings. If you won't do this, your bot will stop working soon.

What should the bot owners do:

1. Open @BotFather, send /mybots command.

2. Choose your bot from the list.

3. Tap API Token, then Revoke current token. After that, send the new token to @LivegramBot.

Telegram filed for enforcement of fines in the amount of $148.000

The bailiffs opened new cases against Telegram on the enforcement of fines, for a total of $148.000, because it refused to remove content prohibited in the Russian Federation.

According to the data bank of the Federal Bailiff Service (FSSP), based on the decision of the Tagansky Court of Moscow dated December 20 2021, three enforcement proceedings were initiated against the company to collect $67.000, $27.000 and $54.000 in fines.

As reported, in mid-December 2021, Telegram fully paid off the debt in fines for the amount of $200.000.

#fines

Telegram may be blocked in Germany in case of non-compliance with legal requirements

German Interior Minister Nancy Feser warned about disabling the work of the Telegram messenger in case of failure to comply with the requirements of the laws of the country. Such a move may be taken as a "last resort" if other means of dealing with the problem fail. At the same time, Feser notes that Germany alone has no chance to resolve the situation, so a pan-European decision is required on this matter.

As we wrote earlier German Justice Minister Marco Buschmann warned that Telegram could face millions of fines for violating German law.

At the end of December, the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, drew attention to the statements of German officials regarding Telegram.

Telegram's 2021 Achievements

The App Annie analytics company published a new report called "State of Mobile 2022" regarding mobile apps popularity and mobile services market development worldwide.

According to the bulletin, after closing the last year we can conclude that Telegram made these achievements:

— Telegram is 5th most downloaded app in the world.
— Telegram has 7th biggest monthly active users base worldwide.
— Telegram is 2nd most downloaded app in Russia, only losing to TikTok.
— The only country where Telegram is 1st most downloadable app is Spain.

#statistics

Telegram for iOS got an 8.4.1 version update

— The animation which follows after you put a reaction has been reduced in size and length. Optionally, you can touch and hold any of the reactions to enjoy a full-fledged animation.
— Animated icons in the navbar. When you click on each of the four icons, you can see an animation.
— Redesigned screens for clearing cache and setting a local PIN.
— New contact sorting section interface.

#iOS

Welt: German authorities want to strengthen control over Telegram

The Federal Criminal Affairs Agency of Germany (BKE) plans to increase pressure on the Telegram messenger by tightening control over the operation of the platform in order to combat illegal content.

"The goal is to achieve cooperation between Telegram and law enforcement agencies, federal authorities, as well as the authorities of federal lands," — the BKA said in response to a request from Die Welt.

Earlier, German Interior Minister Nancy Fraser, in an interview with the German newspaper Die Zeit, didn't deny a possibility of a ban of the Telegram messenger in Germany.