Telegram CEO Pavel Durau has broken his silence nearly two weeks after his arrest in France, saying the allegations are false.
Durov: “If a country is dissatisfied with an Internet service, the accepted practice is to sue the service itself.” said in a 600-word statement on his Telegram account.
“Using pre-smartphone-era laws to charge a CEO with crimes committed by third parties on a platform he controls is the wrong approach.”
He was a fool is charged late last month for facilitating various forms of criminal activity on Telegram, including drug trafficking and money laundering, following an investigation into the distribution of child sexual abuse material by an unnamed individual.
He also highlighted the difficulty of balancing privacy and security, noting that Telegram is ready to exit markets that are not compatible with its mission to “protect our users under authoritarian regimes.”
Durov also blamed “growing diseases that made it easier for criminals to abuse our platform.” The popular messaging app recently surpassed 950 million monthly active users.
“That’s why I’ve made it my personal goal to make sure we make a big difference in that regard,” he said. “We have already started this process domestically and I will be sharing more details on our progress with you very soon.”
The company since then updated the FAQ to allow users to report illegal content in private and group chats by flagging it for review using a dedicated “Report” button, a significant policy change and a feature that was previously prohibited.
Durov’s statement, however, does not elaborate on the lack of end-to-end encryption (E2EE) protection by default, which users must explicitly enable in one-on-one chats.
“It’s also a ‘cloud messenger,’ which means all messages are stored on Telegram’s servers, not on the user’s device,” said Moxie Marlinspike, creator of E2EE’s messaging app Signal. noted.
“With a single request, the Russian Telegram team can obtain every message that the president of France has ever sent or received to his contact, every message that those contacts have ever sent or received to their contact, every message that has ever been sent or received contacts of these contacts, etc.”
Matthew Green, a security researcher and associate professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University, also called the platform a cumbersome process that requires at least four clicks on the Telegram iOS app.
“The feature is clearly not enabled for the vast majority of conversations and is only available for one-on-one conversations and never for group chats with more than two people,” Green said. said.
“As a sort of weird bonus, enabling end-to-end encryption in Telegram is surprisingly difficult for uninitiated users. Secret chats only work when your interlocutor is there happens online when you do that.”
