"Like the bombing of the maternity ward in Mariupol," he said, "Even before it hits the news, you see the videos on the Telegram channels." Perpetrators of these scams will create a public group on Telegram to promote these investment packages that are usually accompanied by fake testimonies and sometimes advertised as being Shariah-compliant. Interested investors will be asked to directly message the representatives to begin investing in the various investment packages offered. Again, in contrast to Facebook, Google and Twitter, Telegram's founder Pavel Durov runs his company in relative secrecy from Dubai. This ability to mix the public and the private, as well as the ability to use bots to engage with users has proved to be problematic. In early 2021, a database selling phone numbers pulled from Facebook was selling numbers for $20 per lookup. Similarly, security researchers found a network of deepfake bots on the platform that were generating images of people submitted by users to create non-consensual imagery, some of which involved children. Anastasia Vlasova/Getty Images
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