Telegram privacy criticism pours in as founder awaits trial

next time arrest Privacy advocates immediately came to his defense following Telegram CEO Pavel Durov’s remarks in Paris last week, including those from Proton CEO Andy Yen. calling Durov’s arrest ‘insane’

But since then, tensions have arisen between privacy-focused apps and cryptocurrency developers, with some questioning Telegram’s “tools.”User Privacy.”

In a recent interview madMeredith Whittaker, president of secure messaging app Signal, has argued that Telegram “does not offer meaningful privacy or end-to-end encryption.” She has characterized Signal as a “private, secure communications app,” while Telegram is “a social media app that allows individuals to communicate with millions of others simultaneously.”

Signal co-founder Moxie Marlinspike doubled down on Whittaker’s claims. tweet“Telegram messages are not (end-to-end) encrypted. It is also a ‘cloud messenger,’ meaning all messages are stored on Telegram servers, not on your device,” he noted.

Zooko Wilcox-O’Hearn, former CEO of Electric Coin Company, revealed: Privacy Coin Zcash was also taken twitter Telegram criticizes its decision to “falsely market itself as an encrypted and secure service”.

Other experts are similarly skeptical.

“Telegram brands itself as an encrypted messenger, but it’s not. It’s centralized and its keys aren’t private,” said Christien Rioux, president and chief architect of the Veilid Foundation. Decode. “The fact is, if you can force a company to turn over information, it wasn’t private in the first place.”

Veilid is a peer-to-peer, open source framework for building personal apps. Veilid Foundation Vice President Katelyn Bowden goes even further:

“Telegram is not private, it is not encrypted, and given the recent events with Pavel Durov being arrested and then released, it is very likely that the French government already has all the data they need, and I think that is really concerning,” Bowden said.

Kim Crawley, cybersecurity expert, author, and instructor at the Open Institute of Technology, said: Decode There is a widespread perception that Telegram is safe.

“It’s interesting because I’ve seen a lot of dark web drug dealers set up shop through Telegram,” she said, noting that technical arguments can also be lost on the topic.

“It would be nice if all these platforms were as secure as advertised, so that regular people wouldn’t have to turn into paranoid hackers,” Crowley said.

Telegram and Encryption

Telegram offers end-to-end encryption, but this level of security is not standard and is only available in the Secret Chat messaging feature. Most chats on the platform use cloud-based encryption, creating messages in Cloud Chats. “Theoretically” Accessible to third parties.

Telegram claims that the decryption keys for cloud chats are “fragmented and not stored in the same location as the data they protect,” and that it would require “multiple court orders in different jurisdictions” to force the company to give up those keys. “We have so far disclosed zero bytes of user data to any third party, including governments,” the company notes.

Decode We’ve reached out to Telegram for comment and will update this story if we hear back. In a pre-written statement, the company said it was “committed to protecting our users’ privacy and human rights, including freedom of speech and assembly.”

Durov was arrested on Saturday by France’s National Anti-Fraud Office. be dragged to court Where he was on Wednesday be formally charged He was charged with a number of charges, including drug trafficking, organized fraud, and using his platform to distribute child sexual abuse material (CSAM).

In addition to paying 5 million euros (about $5.5 million) in bail, the Telegram CEO is also banned from leaving French territory and must appear at a police station twice a week.