[souvlakee]

As Russian, I can say that Telegram in Russia is the number one messenger among Russian government's oppositionists. Simply saying, if you have anti-goverment channels/chats/friends in you Telegram, before walk outside, you remove/hide them in order no to have issues if police officer stop you and ask to unlock your phone (rarely, but happens). Same for Belarus.

Many reasons why Telegram is (most probably) safe. There are a lot of black/gray area stuff here like drugs etc. That people (i don't support them) trust Telegram showing us it's secure.

And the Telegram's owner (Pavel Durov) relocated from Russia for ever due to issues with his previous project (VK) when goverment asked to show private/personal data.

[Andrew_nenakhov]

> That people (i don't support them) trust Telegram showing us it's secure.

No, if some people trust some service, it doesn't mean that this service is secure.

[souvlakee]

I rather meant, if a significant bunch of people use this service for illegal things still being out of prison, hence you can consider this "metric" too (along with others) whether Telegram is secure. However, thre is no statistic for "being out of prison" people who used Telegram like this.

[Andrew_nenakhov]

This particular surveillance and espionage tool might be far too valuable to employ it against some petty criminals. It is known that a lot of Russian dissidents and members of the opposition use Telegram - so covertly spying on them might be much more important for FSB directorate.

[Aachen]

EncroChat and SkyECC users would beg to differ

[orbital-decay]

Regardless of encryption or authorities cooperation shenanigans, Telegram has (had?) a serious privacy issue in that your number is public by default, and even if you set it to private after the registration, it gives enough time for a state actor to siphon your phone number off your profile, by running a bot with access to SMS. Which is enough for all practical purposes.

The only real reason ex-Soviet drug users keep using Telegram is they are careless and it's popular. Another suspicion of many is that most of the drug trade in Russia is under FSB "protection", and they have no reason to kill the goose that lays golden eggs. Drug dealers only run Telegram for their clientele though, with anonymous SIMs and Tor; for more serious purposes, they and other criminals use more secure communication channels, XMPP in particular.

>the Telegram's owner (Pavel Durov) relocated from Russia for ever due to issues with his previous project (VK)

...while keeping Telegram developers in Moscow and regularly showing up there himself. (no idea whether it's still true, probably not)

I can't say with 100% confidence that Telegram itself is compromised, though, there's no clear evidence for that. Some smoke probably, but no fire, sketchy indeed.

[rfoo]

> before walk outside, you remove/hide them in order no to have issues if police officer stop you and ask to unlock your phone

In China, too. With a more aggressive approach: just remove the app before going out.

[souvlakee]

Theoretically, they can install it and try to login with your current phone number.

[rfoo]

Unfortunately, Telegram is blocked by GFW. To do so, the police office has to demonstrate how to get around it in front of me, which is pretty unlikely :)

[f6v]

> rarely, but happens

Literally nobody in their sane mind does that.

[beckingz]

The police have ways (lead pipes and detention) of making you unlock your phone.