An error of judgement or a voluntary act to reach an agreement with the authorities. These are the two most popular hypotheses as to why Pavel Durov chose to land on his personal plane in France, a country where he had long been a wanted man. The reasons for the French authorities’ manhunt are not strictly personal but, we could say, professional because they are related to Telegram. The instant messaging application, which in Europe is the number one alternative to WhatsApp, has come into the eye of the storm because it is a favourite of criminals who exploit it to sell illegal products and commit crimes.

According to the French prosecution, Telegram is a medium that harbours a shadowy world of illegal activities: fraud, drug buying and selling, money laundering, terrorism, child pornography trading, and online violence. Founder and number one of the platform, Durov, is considered responsible for not moderating the content on the app and for refusing to remove certain content at the request of the authorities. Hence, his wanted status and immediate arrest as soon as Durov’s plane from Azerbaijan (in the company of his bodyguard and a woman) touched down on French soil at Le Bourget airport, a stopover near Paris.

Personal data denied to authorities

While waiting for updates from Durov or from the French authorities, the point to be clarified is why Telegram has become the app with a dual soul, positive for what it allows you to do but also negative for what it will enable you to do without putting blocks in front of those who use it to commit crimes. The basis on which the app rests is freedom of expression, a point on which Durov has shown he is not willing to compromise, even before developing his most popular app. ‘I prefer to be free than to take orders from someone,’ the 39-year-old, who holds Russian and French citizenship, has said more than once in the past.

The proof lies in having denied the Russian authorities personal data on some demonstrators protesting against the invasion of Crimea in 2014 and, later, blocking the page on VKontakte of Alexey Navalny, the main opponent of Vladimir Putin. VKontakte is the most popular social network in Russia and the former Soviet territories, which Pavel Durov himself launched in 2006. After clashes with the Russian authorities, Durov had to leave control of the platform, which passed into the hands of men close to Putin. Hence, he decided to leave Russia and move to Dubai (after a period spent in Berlin), which became his new home and the headquarters of Telegram.

Telegram is the most secure messaging app?

Returning to current events, Telegram’s popularity is also due to how the app is perceived. It is considered by many to be the safest messaging app ever, not least because, in the presentation, the company claims that Telegram is safer than WhatsApp and Line. The reason is the MTProto protocol, developed by Nikolaj Durov, Pavel’s older brother. However, unlike Whatsapp and Signal, Telegram does not offer end-to-end (E2E) encryption for chats, groups and channels by default.

This means that data is stored on Telegram’s servers and can be accessed from the app itself, but can theoretically also be decrypted using a decryption key. In contrast, on WhatsApp and Signal, only the sender and receiver know the content of the messages, which are unknown and inaccessible even to the company itself. The only space for which Telegram ensures end-to-end encryption is the secret chat, which is why it is so popular among app users. Not only by those who sell weapons and drugs, carry out scams and launder money, because the app is a lifeline for those who live under dictatorial regimes and try to filter information and talk about rights.

Telegram’s turning point

With 900 million monthly active users, Telegram is one of the most widely used instant messaging applications. One of the reasons it has been so successful is the freedom of action of users, despite the fact that the rules prohibit the promotion of violence, spam, explicit sex, child pornography and the sale of drugs.

Only the moderation that takes place with a combination of humans and algorithms is low and sometimes absent, generating few stops compared to the high number of users. Durov’s arrest will mark a decisive watershed because it could call into question Telegram’s level of security and thus cause users to flee to other options, especially if Durov decides to take a step back and follow the authorities’ demands.