"And that set off kind of a battle royale for control of the platform that Durov eventually lost," said Nathalie Maréchal of the Washington advocacy group Ranking Digital Rights. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) had carried out a similar exercise in 2017 in a matter related to circulation of messages through WhatsApp. In December 2021, Sebi officials had conducted a search and seizure operation at the premises of certain persons carrying out similar manipulative activities through Telegram channels. Recently, Durav wrote on his Telegram channel that users' right to privacy, in light of the war in Ukraine, is "sacred, now more than ever." Update March 8, 2022: EFF has clarified that Channels and Groups are not fully encrypted, end-to-end, updated our post to link to Telegram’s FAQ for Cloud and Secret chats, updated to clarify that auto-delete is available for group and channel admins, and added some additional links.
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