Telegram, other messengers should not be used to share crucial information — Medvedev

MOSCOW, September 4. /TASS/. Messaging apps, including Telegram, should not be trusted with sensitive business or personal information, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said in a conversation with the TASS staff.
“Why are we fixated on all these [encryption] keys and so on? I believe that everyone who uses Telegram or other messengers is well aware that you cannot place there the information that is personally sensitive or information that is absolutely private, secret and so on. And everything else, if you can put this at risk, then we do not care if somebody has these keys,” Medvedev said when asked if Telegram can be trusted after its co-founder Pavel Durov was detained in Paris a few days ago.
Medvedev said that decrypting and processing the entire array of information on Telegram will take considerable effort and time.
“It would take a lot of effort to decrypt everything instantly. Use it, but don’t trust it!” Medvedev said.
Durov was detained at Le Bourget airport on August 24. On August 28, his preliminary custody was over. The entrepreneur was delivered to a court, where the prosecutor charged Durov with six offenses, which include complicity in the administration of an online platform that enabled illegal transactions, committed within a criminal group. The offense, according to a statement from the Paris prosecutor’s office, is punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a fine of 500,000 euros. By decision of an investigating judge, the entrepreneur went under judicial supervision with an obligation to post bail of five million euros. He also has to appear twice a week at a police station and is forbidden to leave France.