Now safely in France with his spouse and three of his children, Kliuchnikov scrolls through Telegram to learn about the devastation happening in his home country. Two days after Russia invaded Ukraine, an account on the Telegram messaging platform posing as President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged his armed forces to surrender. 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. 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.
from ms
