Andrey, a Russian entrepreneur living in Brazil who, fearing retaliation, asked that NPR not use his last name, said Telegram has become one of the few places Russians can access independent news about the war. Telegram was founded in 2013 by two Russian brothers, Nikolai and Pavel Durov. "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. 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. Lastly, the web previews of t.me links have been given a new look, adding chat backgrounds and design elements from the fully-features Telegram Web client.
from fr