| Hi, this is Vlad in Tokyo. Messaging apps are perhaps the most subtly pivotal internet software we have: from iMessage serving as the glue that keeps Americans attached to their iPhones to Line and WeChat representing mini mobile operating systems for users in Japan and China, respectively.
But the app I have in mind today is one without nation or flag: it's Telegram, the battle-tested WhatsApp alternative that's favored by terrorists and democracy activists alike. Telegram has proven instrumental in the organization of the leaderless Hong Kong pro-democracy movement: group chats help protesters coordinate their actions, while, as a friend of mine from the city tells me, allowing everyone else to go about their daily business without stumbling into a confrontation. China has been accused of a June cyber attack on Telegram in an early and unsuccessful attempt to deprive protesters of their communication tool. This kind of use is exactly what Telegram was created for. Crafted by Russian brothers Pavel and Nikolai Durov, who had earlier started and been ousted from the country's VKontakte social network, Telegram was built to protect privacy and help people escape intrusion and censorship from their government. It's been the subject of repeated failed attacks from the Putin regime, including a clumsy 2018 attempt to ban it that ended up pushing other services that use the same infrastructure as Telegram offline, which included major banks, online stores and Viber calls. Especially popular in Iran -- where despite being banned it's believed to have somewhere north of 40 million users -- Telegram continues to be a thorn in the side of authoritarian governments all around the world. It has no known backdoors and, even though it's come in for criticism for using proprietary encryption methods instead of open-source ones, those have yet to be compromised. While no messaging app can guarantee a 100% impermeable defense against determined attackers, Telegram's vulnerabilities are few and either theoretical or based on spoof files fooling users into actively enabling an attack. Yes, a highly secure messaging tool can be used for bad as well as good, and Telegram has been in the news as a coordinating tool for extremists planning terror attacks. Less widely known is the fact that Telegram channels are also commonly used to facilitate film and TV piracy as well as to organize Instagram bots. But the company is working to fix those issues and this week it got Europol's endorsement: "Telegram is no place for violence, criminal activity and abusers." For my purposes as a geographically and politically unaligned person, Telegram is an essential, neutral tool. It doesn't lock me into the Apple ecosystem like iMessage does, it doesn't dump my personal information into the great Facebook maw the way that WhatsApp does, and it's not overrun with ads and superfluous services the way that Line is. Because of its extreme similarity to WhatsApp, I often describe Telegram as just WhatsApp without the Facebook involvement. In short, the thing that WhatsApp was supposed to be. Now six and a half years old, Telegram continues to be reliable, fast, secure and yet convenient enough to be accessible via a web client and mobile apps on both iPhones and Android devices. That convenience is what differentiates it from Signal, the other privacy-centric service that journalists often favor for secure communication. Well, there's also the awesome, meme-heavy Telegram stickers, which have recently started adding animated furry animals. Many people come upon Telegram out of necessity. If you care about your privacy and want to use a messaging app that respects and promotes it, maybe you'll conclude that you need Telegram in your life too. | 
⋮↠〖*HDvideo~〗 2020 Spycies: Dos espías rebeldes Película Completa En Línea released 2020. story: Vladimir y Hector, dos agentes secretos d...
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