"There is a significant risk of insider threat or hacking of Telegram systems that could expose all of these chats to the Russian government," said Eva Galperin with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has called for Telegram to improve its privacy practices. "This time we received the coordinates of enemy vehicles marked 'V' in Kyiv region," it added. 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. 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. Asked about its stance on disinformation, Telegram spokesperson Remi Vaughn told AFP: "As noted by our CEO, the sheer volume of information being shared on channels makes it extremely difficult to verify, so it's important that users double-check what they read."
from es