The head of Telegram, Pavel Durov, has been charged by the French judiciary for allegedly allowing criminal activity on the messaging app but avoided jail with a €5m bail.

The Russian-born multi-billionaire, who has French citizenship, was granted release on condition that he report to a police station twice a week and remain in France, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said in a statement.

The charges against Durov include complicity in the spread of sexual images of children and a litany of other alleged violations on the messaging app.

His surprise arrest has put a spotlight on the criminal liability of Telegram, the popular app with around 1 billion users, and has sparked debate over free speech and government censorship.

  • Possibly linux
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    23 months ago

    Just a side note: PGP doesn’t use any form for forward secrecy so if someone gets your keys you are hosed.

    Better encryption out there these days.

    • taanegl
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      13 months ago

      True, but if you lose your keys you’re sort of screwed anyways. But yeah, forward secrecy ftw.

      • Possibly linux
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        23 months ago

        With forward secrecy the keys are destroyed after decryption. The messages then live on your device. If you delete those messages they are gone. Eve (the evil eavesdropper) can not decrypt stored encrypted messages even if they steal your device. The keys rotate and you can not generate previous decryption keys.