At a meeting with participants in the war in Ukraine, Deputy Head of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Dmytro Medvedev stated that the messenger is used by a large number of Russians, in particular in the “svo” zone:
💬 The materials we publish there reach the perception of the average Ukrainian. And he also begins mental processes that are somewhat different than what is shown on TV.
In fact, Medvedev acknowledged that Telegram is a key tool of Russian propaganda in Ukraine and plays an important role in achieving Russian information warfare goals.
Author’s column
Research
04/04/2024 16:29
Convenience or danger: what’s wrong with the Telegram messenger
Telegram
misinformation
Russian propaganda
Social networks
Over the years of its existence, the Telegram messenger has become an important part of the lives of many Ukrainians. During a full-scale war, its popularity grew even more due to convenience, unpretentiousness to the quality of Internet communication and the responsiveness of popular channels.
Telegram is the undisputed leader in its segment: according to a Kantar study , in the second half of 2023, 88% of Ukrainians use the application. In second place is Viber, which in 2022 was ahead of its competitor by almost 10%.
During the war, Telegram became the main source of news on the Internet for Ukrainians, significantly ahead of information sites and other social networks. This state of affairs was recorded last year. The current situation has remained unchanged.
Not only consumers, but also news providers are forced to pay attention to the popularity of the messenger: officials, state bodies and most of the Ukrainian media open their channels.
However, Telegram is not only a convenient messenger. Experts in information and cyber security are trying to draw the attention of society and the state to the danger posed by the use of this application.
Representatives of the authorities and special services understand the existence of problems with the vulnerability of users and anonymous channels. At the end of 2023 – at the beginning of 2024, statements about this were made by the adviser to the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Mykhailo Podolyak, the Secretary of the National Security Council Oleksiy Danilov, the spokesman of the Main Intelligence Directorate Andriy Yusov .
The Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security has gathered experts’ explanations of the dangers of the Telegram messenger.
Experts’ comments can be divided into four groups.
1. Communication with Putin’s Russia
The founder of Telegram is the Russian Pavlo Durov, who in 2006 created the Vkontakte (VK) social network. In 2013-2014, he sold it – allegedly under pressure from the Russian authorities, and switched to a new project – Telegram. Together with the development team that previously worked with Durov on VK.
Over the years of its existence, the Telegram messenger has become an important part of the lives of many Ukrainians. During a full-scale war, its popularity grew even more due to convenience, unpretentiousness to the quality of Internet communication and the responsiveness of popular channels.
Telegram is the undisputed leader in its segment: according to a Kantar study , in the second half of 2023, 88% of Ukrainians use the application. In second place is Viber, which in 2022 was ahead of its competitor by almost 10%.
During the war, Telegram became the main source of news on the Internet for Ukrainians, significantly ahead of information sites and other social networks. This state of affairs was recorded last year. The current situation has remained unchanged.
Not only consumers, but also news providers are forced to pay attention to the popularity of the messenger: officials, state bodies and most of the Ukrainian media open their channels.
However, Telegram is not only a convenient messenger. Experts in information and cyber security are trying to draw the attention of society and the state to the danger posed by the use of this application.
Representatives of the authorities and special services understand the existence of problems with the vulnerability of users and anonymous channels. At the end of 2023 – at the beginning of 2024, statements about this were made by the adviser to the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Mykhailo Podolyak, the Secretary of the National Security Council Oleksiy Danilov, the spokesman of the Main Intelligence Directorate Andriy Yusov .
The Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security has gathered experts’ explanations of the dangers of the Telegram messenger.
Experts’ comments can be divided into four groups.
1. Communication with Putin’s Russia
The founder of Telegram is the Russian Pavlo Durov, who in 2006 created the Vkontakte (VK) social network. In 2013-2014, he sold it – allegedly under pressure from the Russian authorities, and switched to a new project – Telegram. Together with the development team that previously worked with Durov on VK.
Until 2021, the controlling stake in VK was owned by the structures of Putin’s oligarch Alisher Usmanov. Today, VK is indirectly owned by Gazprom.
Although Durov has repeatedly made statements about his opposition, Telegram continues to have not only a Russian founder and developers, but also Russian investors. In 2017 and 2021, Durov managed to attract $2.7 billion in investments. Among the investors, he named Serhiy Solonin (founder of the Qiwi payment system), Roman Abramovich and David Yakobashvili (co-founder of Wimm-Bill-Dann). In 2022, Ukraine imposed sanctions on Yakobashvili for supporting the Putin regime.
In March 2021, Russian state-owned VTB Capital and private Aton and Alfa-Capital bought Telegram bonds for a total of $1 billion. Thanks to this, Durov was able to pay off the company’s debts, which amounted to 684 million dollars.
2. (In)security of data
Since 2018, the Russian authorities pretended to be trying to block Telegram in the Russian Federation. And Durov himself stated during the blocking, as well as during the sale of Vkontakte, about the pressure from the Russian special services and his reluctance to hand over user data to them.
But in 2020, the epic with blocking ended, and the main enemy of the messenger – Roskomnadzor – even started its own channel in the messenger. Therefore, the removal of the Russian authorities’ questions to Telegram may indicate the achievement of certain agreements between the developer and the special services. Although at the same time, the official position of Telegram is that “no agreements were concluded that would contribute to the unblocking of the social network in Russia.”
At the same time, in March 2022, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Security, Oleg Matveychev, publicly announced Telegram’s connection with the Russian state. According to him, Durov “found a compromise” with the FSB and Roskomnadzor regarding the monitoring of “dangerous entities”.
The Russian President Vladimir Putin also noted the agreements between the messenger and the authorities – he said that the application and the authorities interact normally.
Russian servers . According to the Russian legislation of the Russian Federation, during the collection of personal data, the operator is obliged to ensure their recording, systematization, accumulation, storage, clarification, extraction, using databases located on the territory of the Russian Federation. As of April 2022, the telegram.org site was hosted on a Russian IP.
The servers through which Telegram transmits messages belong to the Russian company GlobalNet with its head office in Moscow. Some of these servers are physically located on the territory of the Russian Federation. Information about these servers is published on the company’s official website, which was noticed by journalist Nazar Tokar .
User data on servers . During installation, the application asks for permissions to access the camera, microphone, documents, images, contacts. Telegram’s policy is to store all this data on servers. Therefore, there is no reason to believe Telegram’s assurances about the security of your data. And therefore, these servers, which are located in the territory of the Russian Federation , can get not only files sent during correspondence, but in general the entire content of your smartphone .
Access of special services to correspondence . There is a lot of evidence that Russian special services have access to the private correspondence of Telegram users and use the information obtained against them. In particular, Kherson-based journalist Ihor Bondarenko told in an interview with Radio NV how, during his detention in the occupied territories, FSB officers showed him a printed correspondence that he had deleted a few months ago.
What’s more: Russian propaganda openly flaunts the fact that the FSB has full access to the correspondence of Telegram users, even deleted ones. At the end of December 2023, the TV channel “Russia 1” showed a story about the use of this access during filtering measures against citizens of Ukraine.
End-to-end encryption is questionable . Telegram is positioned as a secure messenger that supports data encryption. However, “not everything is so clear-cut.” The function of end-to-end encryption and direct messaging, without the involvement of intermediate servers, is provided only for secret chats. But the option is disabled by default, and access to it in current versions of the application is complicated. In addition, unlike some competitors, Telegram did not conduct an external audit of this system. Therefore, there are no guarantees that the declared option really works. The fact that Telegram secret chats do not work quite correctly is evidenced by the presence of a bug: if you log out or reinstall the application, you will lose access to secret chats. But not your interlocutors, who can continue to write there, not knowing that the messages are no longer available for the addressee.
Geolocation tracking . Telegram requests access to the geolocation of the device to activate the “People nearby” option. On the one hand, it is convenient. On the other hand, the application has the ability not only to collect information about your routes and even offline meetings with other Telegram users, but also to track movements in real time.
It is not difficult to guess how convenient this tool is for tracking a specific person or the gatherings and movements of the military during the war.
Support from the state . Today, Telegram is one of the privileged software products in the Russian Federation. It is installed by default on smartphones designed for the Russian market.
And Russian prisoners testify that their commanders oblige them to use not only VK services, over which state control is not even hidden, but also Telegram.
Fight against terrorism (?) . Telegram positions itself as a safe messenger that “does not introduce censorship and does not transfer user data to special services.” However, as early as 2018, clause 8.3 of its privacy policy provides for the transfer to the “relevant authorities” of the IP address and phone number of a user who has a court order on suspicion of terrorism. Taking into account the ease with which the Russian repressive machine generates such accusations against the Ukrainian military, law enforcement officers, civil servants, politicians, volunteers, it is impossible to talk about data security.
Lack of censorship (?) . Telegram’s statements about not accepting censorship are clearly contradicted by the actions of the messenger’s administration regarding channels that have the potential to coordinate the protest movement in the Russian Federation. Thus, at the end of November 2023, the Telegram channel of the wives of mobilized Russians “The Way Home” was marked as FAKE. It is intended for clone channels pretending to be official. A number of regional chats of the channel received similar marks.
In January 2024, at least six Telegram channels covering mass protests in Bashkortostan during the trial of local activist Fail Alsynov were deleted.
The official bot in which Telegram publishes transparency reports says that these reports are not available for Ukraine. Telegram management avoids contacts with Ukrainian government structures.
In Ukraine, there are actually no tools to stop crimes against citizens and the state, which are committed with the help of Telegram.
Instead, there are precedents for providing other states with user data not only under the pretext of fighting terrorism. In 2022, Telegram handed over the IP addresses and phone numbers of channel administrators accused of copyright infringement to the Indian government.
A playground for disinformation
Russia actively uses Telegram to spread disinformation, propaganda and conduct information and psychological operations against Ukraine.
Back in 2021, the Security Service of Ukraine reported that the activities of the network of anonymous Telegram channels (“Resident”, “Spletnitsa”, “Legitymny” and others) were controlled by Russian special services.
The creation of this network of pseudo-Ukrainian channels took place in 2018-2019. On the eve and after the presidential elections, they actively attracted the audience with “insiders” allegedly from the Kyiv government offices, actively referring to anonymous sources in the Office of the President, the Verkhovna Rada, the Cabinet of Ministers, etc.
Also, on the eve and in the first weeks of the full-scale invasion, dozens of channels were created in Telegram , the names of which appeared with the names of settlements and districts that the Russians captured or planned to capture . The channels published regional news mixed with propaganda and disinformation under the guise of rumors or “insiders”.
Russian special services have repeatedly created clones of the Telegram channels of Ukrainian officials and military units to conduct special information operations.
Currently, Telegram has at least 1,500 channels and bots that are used in subversive and intelligence activities against Ukraine. The synchronicity of the channel groups is evidence that they form networks under the control of one or another special service.
Criminal Telegram
Telegram is a platform for the sale of drugs, psychotropic substances and other illegal substances, weapons, child pornography, fake documents, stolen databases, including bank cards, counterfeit branded clothes, perfumes, etc. This makes the messenger an analogue of the darknet , and individual Telegram channels are complicit in serious crimes.
In addition, Telegram is a real “piracy bay”. A huge number of channels specialize in the distribution of illegal audiovisual content: pirated films and music. For Ukrainian musicians, Telegram is, without exaggeration, “pirate #1” . According to various estimates, our performers may miss up to 25-30% of their profits through pirated Telegram channels. This not only affects the amount of taxes paid, but also slows down the development of the music industry.
Channels with pirated copies of films take away audiences from legal streaming services that pay taxes to the Ukrainian budget and royalties to Ukrainian authors.
Conclusions
Despite the convenience and other advantages of Telegram, one should not forget about a number of important problems. The most popular messenger in Ukraine, Telegram, is used by Russian special services to spread disinformation, propaganda, collect intelligence data, and conduct subversive work.
Potentially, Telegram is a kind of “Enigma of the 21st century”, or an analogue of the British operation “Ultra” during the Second World War. Then His Majesty’s intelligence conducted a successful cryptanalysis and was able to read the encrypted messages of the German command. That the system was “leaking” was a secret to both the Nazis and the Allies until the end of the war.
Telegram is also a tool for committing crimes, in particular for the distribution of pirated and prohibited content, illegal trade, etc.
To spread propaganda, the Kremlin uses various platforms, including almost all available social networks. But unlike other social networks, Telegram does not even declare its goal of countering disinformation.
The Russian Federation already dominates the Telegram information segment. And continues to increase its presence there – in particular, in the Ukrainian segment. This is evidenced by the Kremlin’s plans for the “information capture of Ukraine”. What fits into the strategy of conducting information and psychological operations of the Russian Federation against Ukraine. Even in spite of occasional successes (pro-Ukrainian TG channels are worth millions), Ukraine is unable to break this Russian dominance with either financial or administrative mechanisms
