Telegram CEO Pavel Durov has damaged his silence almost two weeks after his arrest in France, stating the costs are misguided.
“If a rustic is sad with an web service, the established apply is to start out a authorized motion towards the service itself,” Durov stated in a 600-word assertion on his Telegram account.
“Utilizing legal guidelines from the pre-smartphone period to cost a CEO with crimes dedicated by third-parties on the platform he manages is a misguided method.”
Durov was charged late final month for enabling varied types of legal exercise on Telegram, together with drug trafficking and cash laundering, following a probe into an unnamed individual’s distribution of kid sexual abuse materials.
He additionally highlighted the struggles to steadiness each privateness and safety, noting that Telegram is able to exit markets that are not appropriate with its mission to “shield our customers in authoritarian regimes.”
Durov additionally blamed “rising pains that made it simpler for criminals to abuse our platform.” The favored messaging app not too long ago crossed 950 million month-to-month energetic customers.
“That is why I made it my private purpose to make sure we considerably enhance issues on this regard,” he stated. “We have already began that course of internally, and I’ll share extra particulars on our progress with you very quickly.”
The corporate has since up to date its FAQ to permit customers to report unlawful content material inside non-public and group chats by flagging it for evaluation utilizing a devoted “Report” button, a serious coverage shift and a characteristic that was beforehand off-limits.
Durov’s assertion, nonetheless, would not delve into the dearth of end-to-end encryption (E2EE) protections by default, which customers should explicitly allow in one-to-one chats.
“Additionally it is a ‘cloud messenger,’ which means that every one messages dwell on Telegram’s servers relatively than the person’s gadget,” Moxie Marlinspike, creator of the E2EE messaging app Sign, identified.
“With one question, the Russian Telegram workforce can get each message the French president has ever despatched or obtained to his contacts, each message these contacts have ever despatched or obtained to their contacts, each message these contacts’ contacts have ever despatched or obtained, and so on.”
Matthew Inexperienced, a safety researcher and an affiliate professor of laptop science at Johns Hopkins College, additional referred to as out the platform for making it an onerous course of that requires not less than 4 clicks on Telegram’s iOS app.
“The characteristic is explicitly not turned on for the overwhelming majority of conversations, and is simply accessible for one-on-one conversations, and by no means for group chats with greater than two individuals in them,” Inexperienced stated.
“As a type of a bizarre bonus, activating end-to-end encryption in Telegram is oddly tough for non-expert customers to really do. Secret Chats solely works in case your dialog accomplice occurs to be on-line whenever you do that.”
