Telegram’s 60 millions users are equal to the total number of customers of all the other highly encrypted services available, including Signal, Silent Circle and Wickr. He said Telegram’s appeal to Islamic militants comes both from its technical features for media-sharing and also its perceived independence from government controls.Įxperts say IS followers recently fled from Surespot, another encrypted messaging service, after reports emerged the U.S.-based firm had received a national security subpoena from U.S. “There are countless alternatives,” said Hassan Hassan, an expert on Islamic state with UK foreign policy think tank Chatham House and co-author of the book “ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror.” Security analysts say the Islamic State’s young, digitally sophisticated recruits likely use a variety of tools and platforms, as well as couriers and face-to-face meetings, to plan operations. Security services would in principle need to have physical possession of a user’s device to break the keys to the encrypted chats. It has group messaging features that allow members to share large videos, voice messages or lots of links in one message, without detection by outsiders because this service does not run through the computing cloud. The main appeal of Telegram is that it allows users to send strongly encrypted messages, for free, to any number of a user’s phones, tablets or computers, which is useful to people who need to switch devices frequently. Telegram says on its website that making profits will never be one of its goals, and if it runs out of money it will ask for donations and charge for nonessential add-ons. The brothers left Russia and moved to Berlin to continue running Telegram, which they fund themselves. Pavel Durov, 31, the frontman, and his brother Nicolay, 34, the technical talent, lost control of VKontakte to businessmen with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2014, after battling the government over demands that it block Russian opposition leaders and turn over information about Ukrainian protesters. Telegram was set up by the two brothers who founded VKontakte, a Russian social networking site inspired by Facebook that counts more than 100 million active users. Some channels attract tens of thousands of followers, she said, adding that IS then counts on followers using Twitter to spread its messages.
IS now has three- or four-dozen channels on Telegram functioning as a kind of press release service, said Rita Katz, director of Bethesda, Maryland.-based extremist monitoring service SITE Intelligence Group.
Īlex Kassirer, a counter-terrorism analyst with the New York-based private intelligence firm Flashpoint, said that IS uses Telegram broadcast channels to send releases aimed at recruitment, inspiration and motivation. Islamic State has made Telegram its media mouthpiece in the face of increasingly aggressive efforts to block the group from Twitter and other mainstream social media platforms. The group used Telegram to claim responsibility for the Paris attacks, which left 129 people dead, and the bombing of a Russian airliner over Egypt last month, which killed 224. It counts 60 million active users around the world.Ī new feature of Telegram that was introduced in September has become the preferred method for Islamic State to broadcast news and share videos of military victories or sermons, according to security researchers. The service, set up two years ago, has caught on in many corners of the globe as an ultra-secure way to quickly upload and share videos, texts and voice messages. Nov 18 (Reuters) - The mobile messaging service Telegram, created by the exiled founder of Russia’s most popular social network site, has emerged as an important new promotional and recruitment platform for Islamic State.
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