If there is a message exchange platform that is successful in the context of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, it is Telegram. Encrypted messaging — well, in part — has seen its downloads increase significantly since the start of hostilities. Their number has indeed increased from 441,000 per week at the beginning of February to more than 500,000 at the end of the same month, in Russia alone. On the Ukrainian side, they would have more than doubled to reach 242,000 per week.
There are now 70 million people who use the application in Russia, against 56 million at the beginning of February, and at least 25 million Ukrainians. The app would now total 463 million weekly active users worldwide. The success of Telegram is based on several features, including the ability to create groups (channels) with up to 200,000 members, or to search for public groups. This means of communication is, for example, favored by Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, to disseminate information to the Ukrainian population, and even to the Russians since other platforms such as Instagram and Facebook are now banned by the Kremlin.
Telegram also has a sulphurous reputation. Founded by brothers Pavel and Nikolai Durov, staunch libertarians who fled their native Russia in 2014, the app has very little moderation. It has been a major communication channel for the Islamic State (Daesh) and continues to be favored by many extremist groups such as QAnon in the United States.
But part of the app’s reputation is based on a false claim. Regularly described as a secure and encrypted application, even in the media, Telegram does not actually offer default message encryption. To activate it, you have to go to the options of each conversation and select the “start a secret conversation” tool on the same model as the Facebook Messenger app. The default encryption of messages is offered on applications such as Signal, Olvid or WhatsApp.