Telegram is a free app and runs on donations. According to a blog on the telegram: We believe in fast and secure messaging that is also 100% free. Pavel Durov, who shares our vision, supplied Telegram with a generous donation, so we have quite enough money for the time being. If Telegram runs out, we will introduce non-essential paid options to support the infrastructure and finance developer salaries. But making profits will never be an end-goal for Telegram.
Why Telegram?
Telegram has no known backdoors and, even though it is come in for criticism for using proprietary encryption methods instead of open-source ones, those have yet to be compromised. While no messaging app can guarantee a 100% impermeable defense against determined attackers, Telegram is vulnerabilities are few and either theoretical or based on spoof files fooling users into actively enabling an attack.
