"There is a significant risk of insider threat or hacking of Telegram systems that could expose all of these chats to the Russian government," said Eva Galperin with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has called for Telegram to improve its privacy practices. But because group chats and the channel features are not end-to-end encrypted, Galperin said user privacy is potentially under threat. Again, in contrast to Facebook, Google and Twitter, Telegram's founder Pavel Durov runs his company in relative secrecy from Dubai. Despite Telegram's origins, its approach to users' security has privacy advocates worried. "The argument from Telegram is, 'You should trust us because we tell you that we're trustworthy,'" Maréchal said. "It's really in the eye of the beholder whether that's something you want to buy into."
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