CHENNAI: Ever since our Prime Minister announced the ‘Make In India’ campaign, our citizens, in their misplaced enthusiasm, claim that certain products or services are Indian. These are not only false but they also go viral, and people start using these services without verifying.
For several months, a message demanded that users uninstall WhatsApp from their phones and start using Telegram app because the latter was an Indian app and the former was an American one.
The message took China as an example, where they don’t use WhatsApp but their country’s WeChat, and also encouraged the readers to download Telegram, as it had more features than WhatsApp.
Some of these features included Telegram’s ability to send 50 MB video, use word, excel and Adobe files and other features that were the same as WhatsApp. After this message started making the rounds, Telegram also became one of the top 10 apps to be downloaded from Playstore.
However, the message creator cannot be further away from the truth. The app was created by two Russian brothers, Nikolai and Pavel Durov and is Russia’s most popular messenger service and largest social network. The duo also founded Russia’s version of Facebook called VK.
Telegram Messenger LLP is an independent non-profit company based in Berlin, Germany, which is not connected to VK. Nikolai created the new MTProto protocol that the messenger is based on, while Pavel provided financial support and infrastructure through his digital fortress fund.
Therefore, downloading the app in no way helps in achieving the ‘Make In India’ ambition. However, some of the messages are also added with information such as how passing on the message to 10 others would help the user gain extra balance on his phone. This additional message is an easy give away. But a few naive users still continue to fall for these fake messages.