Telegram Founder Not Willing to Hand Information to Russia

[cryptobroseph]

Pavel Durov, Founder of Telegram, Refuses to Give Russia the Encryption Keys

Russian entrepreneur Pavel Durov was CEO of social networking site VKontakte, which he founded with his brother Nikolai, until the Kremlin and Putin’s allies took over the network in 2014. Since then, he’s been a wandering nomad moving from country to country every few weeks, but he’s technically now a citizen of St Kitts and Nevis.

The Durov brothers formed Telegram around the same time as their relationship with VKontake ended. In 2014 and 2015, the Telegram headquarters were in Berlin, but the team of developers has since moved on to Dubai, with the company being registered as an English LLP and also an American LLC. Towards the end of 2017, it was reported that Telegram was planning to launch their own cryptocurrency. The proposal is for a new blockchain known as the Telegram Open Network (TON) which will use Gram tokens.

Investors were eagerly awaiting the launch of the public ICO, but it appears they will be disappointed as the first two rounds of the pre-sale have secured the $1.8 billion target for the project. Towards the end of March 2018, a Russian court notified Telegram that they must hand over the encryption keys for the smartphone app to the Federal Security Service (FSB). Durov stated in 2017 that he had been asked to provide backdoor access to the FSB but had refused. In defiance of the court order, Durov has again said he would not hand over the encryption keys.

In an attempt to block users in Russia from using Telegram 16 million IP addresses were blocked by the authorities April 16, 2018. Durov has fought back by handing out bitcoin to enterprises running VPN’s to circumvent the IP block. Telegram has said they haven’t seen any noticeable drop in usage from Russia since the IP block was put in place.

In a strange twist to the story April 18, 2018, Russian authorities have announced that they are not banning Telegram because they want to be able to eavesdrop on confidential communications between users but moreover that they have an issue with the ICO. Russian website RBC indicates the authorities are not happy with Durov’s plans to launch a “completely uncontrolled financial system” which could undermine the Russian rouble. Russia has previously stated that they plan to introduce their own cryptocurrency in 2019.

Originally published at cryptodisrupt.com

[cryptorTUX]

Who knows maybe this is all play for the public, maybe telegram gave some information behind the scenes without our knowledge.  There are a lot if factors that could potentially happen without our knowledge. We get what media sites tell us, I don't know them. Still this doesn't give high credibility to trust Telegram, maybe this is the big play to play on us, as long as your text messages and other related data is stored somewhere else than only on your device you could be in the big problem and this is mainly why I personally don't like nor use telegram as their store our data in their servers.