Individual messages can be fully encrypted. But the user has to turn on that function. It's not automatic, as it is on Signal and WhatsApp. "And that set off kind of a battle royale for control of the platform that Durov eventually lost," said Nathalie Maréchal of the Washington advocacy group Ranking Digital Rights. Now safely in France with his spouse and three of his children, Kliuchnikov scrolls through Telegram to learn about the devastation happening in his home country. Right now the digital security needs of Russians and Ukrainians are very different, and they lead to very different caveats about how to mitigate the risks associated with using Telegram. For Ukrainians in Ukraine, whose physical safety is at risk because they are in a war zone, digital security is probably not their highest priority. They may value access to news and communication with their loved ones over making sure that all of their communications are encrypted in such a manner that they are indecipherable to Telegram, its employees, or governments with court orders. Telegram was co-founded by Pavel and Nikolai Durov, the brothers who had previously created VKontakte. VK is Russia’s equivalent of Facebook, a social network used for public and private messaging, audio and video sharing as well as online gaming. In January, SimpleWeb reported that VK was Russia’s fourth most-visited website, after Yandex, YouTube and Google’s Russian-language homepage. In 2016, Forbes’ Michael Solomon described Pavel Durov (pictured, below) as the “Mark Zuckerberg of Russia.”
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