Ukraine has banned the use of the Telegram messaging platform on official devices issued to government and military personnel, as well as defence sector and critical infrastructure employees.<\/p>\n
The country\u2019s powerful National Security and Defence Council (Rnbo) said this was done to \u201cminimise\u201d threats posed by Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.<\/p>\n
\u201cTelegram is actively used by the enemy for cyber-attacks, the distribution of phishing and malicious software, user geolocation and missile strike correction,\u201d the Rnbo said on Friday.<\/p>\n
Telegram is widely used by the government and the military in both Ukraine and Russia.<\/p>\n
In a statement, the Rnbo said the ban was agreed at a meeting of Ukraine\u2019s top information security officials, the military as well as lawmakers.<\/p>\n
It said military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov had presented credible evidence of Russian special services\u2019 ability to access personal correspondence of Telegram users, even their deleted messages.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have always supported and continue to support freedom of speech, but the issue of Telegram is not a matter of freedom of speech, it is a matter of national security,\u201d Budanov was quoted as saying.<\/p>\n
The Rnbo said that those officials for whom the use of Telegram was part of their work duties would be exempt from the ban.<\/p>\n
Separately, Andriy Kovalenko, head of the Rnbo\u2019s centre on countering disinformation, stressed the ban only applied to official devices \u2013 not personal smartphones.<\/p>\n
He added that government officials and military personnel would be able to continue to maintain and update their official Telegram pages.<\/p>\n
Last year, a USAID-Internews survey found that Telegram was the top social platform in Ukraine for news consumption, with 72% of Ukrainians using it.<\/p>\n
Telegram \u2013 which offers end-to-end encryption\u00a0 \u2013 was co-founded by Russian-born Pavel Durov and his brother in 2013.<\/p>\n
A year later, Durov left Russia after refusing to comply with government demands to shut down opposition communities on the platform.<\/p>\n
Last month, Durov, who is also a French national, was placed under formal investigation in France as part of a probe into organised crime.<\/p>\n
His case has fuelled a debate about freedom of speech, accountability and how platforms moderate content.<\/p>\n
In July, Durov claimed that Telegram reached 950 million monthly active users.<\/p>\n
The post Ukraine bans Telegram use on state-issued devices<\/a> first appeared on KBC<\/a>.<\/p>\n The post Ukraine bans Telegram use on state-issued devices<\/a> appeared first on KBC<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ukraine has banned the use of the Telegram messaging platform on official devices issued to government and military personnel, as well as defence sector and critical infrastructure employees. The country\u2019s powerful National Security and Defence Council (Rnbo) said this was done to \u201cminimise\u201d threats posed by Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94374\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}