Iran 2017-2018: Protests break out in the city of Mashhad, denouncing corruption, mismanagement and rising food prices. Within days, the protests spread to a dozen other cities and rural communities across the country. The government in Tehran struggles to bring them under control.

Thailand 2020: Resistance to Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha’s military regime is growing at the country’s universities after being initiated by an opposition party. The protests quickly gain momentum and eventually lead to a “state of emergency”.

Belarus 2020: Presidential elections are taking place in the country that has been ruled by an autocrat for decades. Dictator Alexander Lukashenko announces his re-election. Months of mass demonstrations follow.

Anonymous accounts, unlimited chat group size

All of these and other protests have one thing in common: they were largely organized on Telegram.

The messaging service has become one of the most popular in the world since it was co-founded by Pavel Durov – who is currently imprisoned in Paris – in 2013.

More than 900 million people use Telegram. The company prides itself on being much less strict in regulating content than other messaging services. The app works even when the internet is extremely slow – for example when governments try to curb usage.

In addition, chat groups with up to 20,000 participants can be created, allowing very large crowds to be mobilized quickly.

The app also promises its users a particularly high level of anonymity. Customers must provide a mobile phone number when opening an account, but can provide a user name that remains invisible to other chat group members. All of these features make Telegram particularly interesting for certain groups.

Fake news, propaganda and extremism

However, it is not only opposition groups in authoritarian regimes that are interested. Telegram also became a popular platform for Covid-19 deniers in 2020.

After Parler – a platform favored by right-wing extremists and radical populists to spread right-wing extremist content – ​​was temporarily shut down, Telegram became their new preferred platform, where numerous fake news and disinformation campaigns appeared.

Telegram also attracts cybercriminals – Pavel Durov is accused, among other things, of allowing organized crime to run wild on his platform, failing to prevent the distribution of child pornography and covering up crimes.

Durov’s arrest led to a truly strange situation: The Kremlin, which maintains numerous Telegram channels, complained about the arrest as loudly as senior Russian opposition leaders. Georgia Alburov, a longtime confidante of the murdered Russian activist and Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, went so far as to call Durov’s arrest a “serious blow to freedom of expression.”

Serious security vulnerabilities

But the platform is nowhere near as secure and anonymous as most users think – quite the opposite.

“You can talk to anyone you want in security circles and everyone will tell you that Telegram is hopelessly behind other platforms in terms of content confidentiality,” says Jürgen Schmidt, head of the German IT news portal heise online.

Unlike messaging services such as WhatsApp or Signal, Telegram’s content is not encrypted end-to-end, i.e. along the entire route between the phones of one user and the other.

“Telegram is sometimes a bit unclear in this regard,” Schmidt told DW. “They talk about encrypting all messages, but they only mean encryption on the way between the device and the server. As soon as they are on the server, they are decrypted in plain text.”

“A privacy nightmare”

Although it is possible to activate end-to-end data encryption via the settings, it is not that easy – and it does not work for every type of chat.

“This basically means that everything written in the app is stored on Telegram’s servers, to which Durov and his team have full access,” says Schmidt, who described the app as a “privacy nightmare” in one of his articles.

However, it is not known where these servers are actually located – therefore it is also not known who has access to the information stored there. Telegram has not made the location of its servers public.

One step ahead of the law?

But why is Telegram so popular with so many anti-authoritarian protest movements?

“There is no technical explanation,” says Schmidt, who suspects a different motive: “Unlike most other messaging services, Telegram has no US background – where many still believe that ‘evil’ NSA agents are involved.”

Instead, the company is run by a Russian “who gained additional credibility by leaving the country in order to escape the pressure of the regime there.”

Constantly changing company headquarters

Also curious is the fact that Durov never seems to keep his company in one place for long. After leaving Russia, he moved Telegram first to Berlin, then to London and Singapore, before settling in Dubai.

“Of course,” says tech expert Schmidt, “one can speculate that he is trying to evade prosecution. So far, Telegram’s address in Dubai has been received positively by the platform’s users, which gives Durov more credibility because he can no longer be tracked down so easily by German or US authorities.”

This, says Schmidt, also has serious consequences for users. “They have no way of taking recourse against Telegram.”

The online platform was designed with this in mind. “You can see that as a positive thing if, for example, you are in the sights of law enforcement authorities, but it would have disadvantages for someone who has become a victim of online fraud.”

The IT expert’s final conclusion: “Personally, I would stay well clear of Telegram if it involves anything remotely confidential.”

This article was translated from German by Jon Shelton