After fleeing Russia, the brothers founded Telegram as a way to communicate outside the Kremlin's orbit. They now run it from Dubai, and Pavel Durov says it has more than 500 million monthly active users. He floated the idea of restricting the use of Telegram in Ukraine and Russia, a suggestion that was met with fierce opposition from users. Shortly after, Durov backed off the idea. Also in the latest update is the ability for users to create a unique @username from the Settings page, providing others with an easy way to contact them via Search or their t.me/username link without sharing their phone number. As a result, the pandemic saw many newcomers to Telegram, including prominent anti-vaccine activists who used the app's hands-off approach to share false information on shots, a study from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue shows. Telegram does offer end-to-end encrypted communications through Secret Chats, but this is not the default setting. Standard conversations use the MTProto method, enabling server-client encryption but with them stored on the server for ease-of-access. This makes using Telegram across multiple devices simple, but also means that the regular Telegram chats you’re having with folks are not as secure as you may believe.
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