Telegram has become hugely popular during the Ukraine conflict. In response to worries that its Russian founder has been pressured into providing data to the Kremlin, the billionaire issues a defiant statement.
Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov has a complicated history with his homeland, claiming he felt compelled to leave because he wouldn't provide data on Ukrainians. Since the Ukraine war began, Telegram has become a critical source of information – and plenty of mis- and disinformation too – related to the conflict.
The Ukrainian government has been giving updates on the messaging service, its citizens have communicated with relatives and told the world about living conditions since Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded their country a little more than a week ago, and hacktivists on both sides, pro-Russia communities – just about anyone wanting to know what’s going on in the war - have swelled its user ranks.
The app’s billionaire founder, Pavel Durov, born in St. Petersburg but now living a reclusive life in Dubai, has remained typically apolitical, talking only the rise in users and efforts to keep the service up. On Monday, however, he got a lot more personal., that Telegram or its employees could be pressured into providing Russia with Ukrainians’ personal data, a Telegram spokesperson said Durov had never given any Ukrainian’s data to Russia.
“Pavel Durov, neither personally, nor through any of his companies, never gave any data of Ukrainians to the Russian government,” the spokesperson said. They added that Telegram had never given any data on any user to Russian authorities. Unlike other major tech providers, Telegram does not have a transparency report that reveals how it provides user information to law enforcement across the globe.on Monday in which he raised his personal interest in the conflict.
He recounted his story of why he left Russia in 2013, after the federal policing agency, the FSB, demanded he provide “private data of the Ukrainian users of VK who were protesting against a pro-Russian President.” That story had previously been reported.
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