- Telegram CEO, Pavel Durov, has said that Telegram would prefer to get out of a market that undermine encryption with the rear doors
- This comes when France and other governments press a legal back door for police access to private and encrypted messages
- Pavel Durov was arrested in August 2024 in France for, among other things, providing encrypted services to criminals
Telegram CEO, Pavel Durov, said Telegram would prefer to get out of a market that “undermine encryption with rear doors”, reaffirming the company’s commitment to the privacy and safety of users.
“Unlike some of our competitors, we do not exchange privacy for market participation. In its 12 years of history, Telegram has never revealed a single byte of private messages,” Durov wrote on his public telegram channel on April 21, 2025.
Telegram’s promise is produced as a reaction to the general impulse by a legal means for the police to access private and encrypted messages by French legislators and other European governments. It echoes a similar position previously shared by Secure Messaging App Signal and other suppliers.
As Durov explains in his position, France recently rejected a controversial provision of encryption Backdoor that “would have made France the first in the world to strip its citizens of their right to privacy.”
The bill would have required all encrypted messaging applications and insurance email services to decipher user data at the request of an authority, de facto creating a rear door for the police in software encryption.
However, cryptographers and other experts have argued for a long time that such rear door cannot be implemented without weakening the security infrastructure in which encrypted services depend.
“Why? Because it is technically impossible to ensure that only the police can access a back door. Once introduced, a back door can be exploited by other parts, from foreign agents to computer pirates,” Durov wrote.
Durov also pointed out how to weaken the encryption for each user to combat crime can be ineffective. This is because criminals could continue using the best VPN services and smaller encrypted applications to cover their traces online.
French authorities arrested Pavel Durov in August 2024, accusing him, among other things, of providing encrypted services to criminals. An investigation is currently in progress.
“The battle is far from finishing”
Despite last month’s victory in France, “the battle is far from finishing,” said Durov.
This is not only because, as Durov mentioned, the Paris Police prefect advocated an encryption back door again last week. More countries in Europe are considering a similar proposal.
Know?
While services like Sign And even WhatsApp They are encrypted from end to end by default, which means that all the messages that exchange on your platform are completely private between you and your receiver, only TelegramThe secret chats are encrypted from end to end. This means that you must actively select this function to benefit from this additional level of privacy.
Finding a way for legal and effective access to data for the application of the law is in fact the main objective of the new EU commission strategy, Protectu. Encryted data are the main objective.
Sweden is also considering enforcing a similar requirement for the tastes of Signal, WhatsApp and Imessage. If you succeed, the new rules could go into force since March 2026.
In February, Apple was forced to kill its end -to -end encryption function of ICLOUD in the United Kingdom after a government order to create an encryption rear door to allow access to the application of the law to user data.
Once it is believed to be a paradise for online privacy, an amendment to the Swiss Surveillance Law could also jeopardize safe encryption and internet anonymity in the country.
Outside Europe, Florida seeks to force all social networks platforms that allow accounts for minors to provide an encryption back door for the application of the law.
