WhatsApp's loss is Telegram's gain; app sees 25 million new users in 3 days

Telegram has now crossed 500 million active users with 25 million joining the app in the last 72 hours, thanks to the furore over WhatsApp's new privacy policy.

Telegram founder Pavel Durov confirmed the fact on his personal Telegram account. Durov also shared the demographics of Telegram's recently joined users. "These new users came from across the globe - 38% from Asia, 27% from Europe, 21% from Latin America and 8% from MENA," he said in his post.  

The app received a fillip given the WhatsApp privacy policy chaos in the tech community with many users shifting to Telegram.

Telegram had always been a growing app among plenty of competitors. Its open-source and feature-packed nature has helped the app gather a number of users over the years since it was launched in August 2013.

Pavel without naming WhatsApp, took a sly dig at it by saying that "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."

However, WhatsApp in its defence issued a clarification and answered some of the most-asked questions. The Facebook-owned messaging app has said that policy updates do not affect users' privacy with friends or family.

Also read: WhatsApp privacy policy row: Govt examining Facebook-owned app's latest update

Also read: WhatsApp's new privacy policy "very confusing", says Signal co-founder Brian Acton