Pavel Durov, Telegram's CEO, is known as "the Russian Mark Zuckerberg," for co-founding VKontakte, which is Russian for "in touch," a Facebook imitator that became the country's most popular social networking site. One thing that Telegram now offers to all users is the ability to “disappear” messages or set remote deletion deadlines. That enables users to have much more control over how long people can access what you’re sending them. Given that Russian law enforcement officials are reportedly (via Insider) stopping people in the street and demanding to read their text messages, this could be vital to protect individuals from reprisals. "Like the bombing of the maternity ward in Mariupol," he said, "Even before it hits the news, you see the videos on the Telegram channels." Despite Telegram's origins, its approach to users' security has privacy advocates worried. For example, WhatsApp restricted the number of times a user could forward something, and developed automated systems that detect and flag objectionable content.
from cn
