The company has updated its FAQ page to say that private chats are no longer shielded from moderation.
Telegram has quietly removed language from its FAQ page that said private chats were protected from moderation requests. The change comes nearly two weeks after its CEO, Pavel Durov, was arrested in France for allegedly allowing “criminal activity to go on undeterred on the messaging app.”
Earlier today, Durov issued his first public statement since his arrest, promising to moderate content more on the platform, a noticeable change in tone after the company initially said he had “nothing to hide.”
“Telegram’s abrupt increase in user count to 950M caused growing pains that made it easier for criminals to abuse our platform,” he wrote in the statement shared on Thursday. “That’s why I made it my personal goal to ensure we significantly improve things in this regard. We’ve already started that process internally, and I will share more details on our progress with you very soon.”
Translation: Durov is completely compromised and will do whatever NATO tells him to do. Do not trust in the security of Telegram, which frankly was never that good to begin with. And do not trust anything else even remotely connected to the company or Durov personally.
For reference, the metadata leaked is: Sender id, recipient id, if the recipient saw the message, when the message was delivered, all reactions and the length of the message.
For example, this is what the server sees in an encrypted message:
type": "m.room.encrypted" "event_id": "$UE04iZS0h4U-_ZhKwPESa3ah1r6u1sURytMhU8GyVnc" "content": -{ "algorithm": "m.megolm.v1.aes-sha2" ciphertext": "AwgAErABPeRzzy2zD0X3/XYuP6Z/ GoxYVEFYafFRtrDUalTz9HnOvy+Y7v3Mb/ ucbMiyKTe74h2QdgRaHQk9JaDN5Cwq6hmHQuy5pxxnNki9 YZ4BD5mNbaWc5kL7k2+qftumwHWxdYvUTLBwz3dK6c29ik 69wcX1wyB6NReP90/2xVxHQjHH727yzLyrYuOYapTy9Esdzc HXvoIJ5AIVLSzaAEulY5YcwhHQQQF3LHNrkwZ2W0AYy77Z WzfutYGinFpqXWRTXFM65V9V7nVkmPjjOCNc+Eiz70h0zRu QQC2XXZcWhbt7rwKPeeoffaWHhmNiMOGBioBkpzlljw4" "device_id": "RYIDRJCFLQ" "sender_key": "EhlZmYo85D8ICluhCNUIk+U/ TbTzMG5oB+b7z/+w8Bs" "session_id": "j+fsgZDUu2ocbB8fLWpQlJFBNnNkGLOefZnBceTI4OE" origin_server_ts": 1725666785233 "sender": "@criticalresist8:matrix.org" "room_id": "!RsmVqNrD6NO0EJIN:genzedong.xyz" "unsignedAnd after decryption, you get this:
type": "m.room.message" "content": -{ "body": "i love when dogs do that with their head" "m.mentions": - { "msgtype": "m.text