Two days after Russia invaded Ukraine, an account on the Telegram messaging platform posing as President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged his armed forces to surrender. Telegram has gained a reputation as the “secure” communications app in the post-Soviet states, but whenever you make choices about your digital security, it’s important to start by asking yourself, “What exactly am I securing? And who am I securing it from?” These questions should inform your decisions about whether you are using the right tool or platform for your digital security needs. Telegram is certainly not the most secure messaging app on the market right now. Its security model requires users to place a great deal of trust in Telegram’s ability to protect user data. For some users, this may be good enough for now. For others, it may be wiser to move to a different platform for certain kinds of high-risk communications. As a result, the pandemic saw many newcomers to Telegram, including prominent anti-vaccine activists who used the app's hands-off approach to share false information on shots, a study from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue shows. Unlike Silicon Valley giants such as Facebook and Twitter, which run very public anti-disinformation programs, Brooking said: "Telegram is famously lax or absent in its content moderation policy." Although some channels have been removed, the curation process is considered opaque and insufficient by analysts.
from br
