Conspiracy, Fake News, Crime: Why Is Telegram Controversial?
Durov’s arrest led to a truly strange situation in which the Kremlin — which maintains numerous Telegram channels — is complaining just as loudly as high-ranking Russian opposition leaders. Georgia Alburov, a longtime associate of murdered Russian activist and Kremlin-critic Alexey Navalny, went so far as to say Durov’s arrest represented a, “heavy blow to freedom of speech.”
Serious Security Vulnerabilities
Yet the platform is not nearly as secure and anonymous as most users think — quite the opposite.
“You can talk to anyone you want within security circles and every one will tell you that Telegram is desperately lagging behind other platforms when it comes to content confidentiality,” says Jürgen Schmidt, who heads the German IT news site heise online.
Unlike messaging services such as WhatsApp or Signal, content on Telegram is not encrypted end-to-end, that is along the entire path between one user’s phone and another’s.
“Telegram is a little unclear sometimes in communicating that,” as Schmidt told DW. “They talk about encrypting all messages but they only mean encrypted on the path between the device and the server. Once they are on the server they are decrypted in plain text form.”
‘A Privacy Nightmare’
Although it is in fact possible to change settings to enable end-to-end data encryption, it isn’t very easy — it also does not work for every type of chat.
“Principally, that means everything that is written on the app is stored on Telegram’s servers, where Durov and his team have full access,” said Schmidt, who described the app as a “privacy nightmare” in one of his articles.
It is not known, however, where those servers are actually located — therefore it is also unknown just who has access to the information stored on them. Telegram has not made the location of its servers public.
One Step Ahead of the Law?
But why is Telegram so popular with so many anti-authoritarian protest movements?
“There’s no technical explanation,” says Schmidt, who suggests a different motivation: “Unlike most other messaging services, Telegram does not have a US background — where many still think that ‘evil’ NSA operatives are involved.”
Instead, the company is run by a Russian “who also gained credibility by leaving the country in order to avoid pressure from the regime there.”
Constantly Moving Company Headquarters
Peculiar as well is the fact that Durov never seems to keep his company in one place for very long. After leaving Russia he first moved Telegram to Berlin, then London and Singapore before settling in Dubai.
“Of course,” says tech expert Schmidt, “one can speculate that he is moving to avoid law enforcement. To date, Telegram’s Dubai address has been looked on favorably by platform users, giving Durov more credibility because he can no longer be easily pursued by German or US officials.”
That, too, says Schmidt, has serious consequences for users. “They have no way to gain recourse with Telegram.”
The online platform was designed with that fact in mind. “You could see that positively if you were being targeted by criminal prosecutors for instance, but it would have drawbacks for someone who has fallen prey to online fraudsters.”
The IT expert’s final call: “Personally, I would cut a wide berth around Telegram when it comes to anything remotely confidential.”
Thomas Latschan is a DW journalist. This article was translated from German by Jon Shelton, and it is published courtesy of Deutsche Welle (DW).
