"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. "There are a lot of things that Telegram could have been doing this whole time. And they know exactly what they are and they've chosen not to do them. That's why I don't trust them," she said. He floated the idea of restricting the use of Telegram in Ukraine and Russia, a suggestion that was met with fierce opposition from users. Shortly after, Durov backed off the idea. But because group chats and the channel features are not end-to-end encrypted, Galperin said user privacy is potentially under threat. But Telegram says people want to keep their chat history when they get a new phone, and they like having a data backup that will sync their chats across multiple devices. And that is why they let people choose whether they want their messages to be encrypted or not. When not turned on, though, chats are stored on Telegram's services, which are scattered throughout the world. But it has "disclosed 0 bytes of user data to third parties, including governments," Telegram states on its website.
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