"Someone posing as a Ukrainian citizen just joins the chat and starts spreading misinformation, or gathers data, like the location of shelters," Tsekhanovska said, noting how false messages have urged Ukrainians to turn off their phones at a specific time of night, citing cybersafety. "The argument from Telegram is, 'You should trust us because we tell you that we're trustworthy,'" Marรฉchal said. "It's really in the eye of the beholder whether that's something you want to buy into." One thing that Telegram now offers to all users is the ability to โdisappearโ messages or set remote deletion deadlines. That enables users to have much more control over how long people can access what youโre 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. Messages are not fully encrypted by default. That means the company could, in theory, access the content of the messages, or be forced to hand over the data at the request of a government. Multiple pro-Kremlin media figures circulated the post's false claims, including prominent Russian journalist Vladimir Soloviev and the state-controlled Russian outlet RT, according to the DFR Lab's report.
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