this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2023
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Privacy
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Telegram is not Russian. The founder is a Russian - who left Russia about a decade ago after being pushed out of his local Facebook clone (VK) due to not complying with government requests. They nowadays mostly seem to be in Dubai, but as a legal entity hard to locate due to a cat and mouse game they're playing to avoid being reachable for authorities worldwide who want to enforce local laws.
Fair enough, thanks for the info
It's tragicomic how some people trust Telegram specifically because they perceive CEO Pavel Durov to be an enemy of the Russian government, while others trust Telegram because they think it is actually a Russian company and thus won't share data with western governments. (Durov talking about the facts that Signal has received millions from the US government's Radio Free Asia and sends all messages through Amazon servers helps with this second perception).
I assume Durov's relationship status with various governments is it's complicated but also cordial. IMO it would be prudent to assume that intelligence and law enforcement agencies from lots of countries, including ones that are adversaries of each other, are all getting lots of data from Telegram both with and without the company's cooperation.
There is literally no e2ee for most messages, and new devices can be added and authenticated by SMS, so, even the weakest of adversaries can play with it. Telegram really democratizes surveillance capabilities.
But their main office in st Petersburg (russia) lol
not that it matters (see my other comment in this thread), but, citation needed? wikipedia says it is maybe in Dubai.