Russian-born billionaire detained last month in France denies app is ‘anarchic paradise’ The founder of the Telegram messaging app, Pavel Durov, under investigation in France, has said that French authorities should have approached his company with their complaints rather than detaining him, calling the arrest ‘“misguided”. Durov, writing on his Telegram channel early on Friday in his first public comments since his detention last month, denied any suggestion the app was an “anarchic paradise”. Continue reading...

Pavel Durov will probably use French legal disputes to position himself as a champion of free speech, say observers When Pavel Durov came under criticism from Russian regulators over the spread of pornography on the VKontakte social media platform he founded, the tech entrepreneur responded mockingly by changing his Twitter handle from “VK CEO” to “Porn King”. More than a decade later, Durov’s anti-authoritarian stance and hands-off approach to moderation have landed him in more serious trouble. Continue reading...

On Saturday 24 April, the billionaire founder of the Telegram social media and messaging app, Pavel Durov, was arrested by French authorities as he disembarked from his private jet in Paris on his way from Azerbaijan. Officials said the arrest was part of a cybercrime inquiry into criminal activity on the platform and a lack of cooperation with law enforcement. Durov has since been formally charged.  Durov, also known as the 'Russian Mark Zuckerberg' for having founded a similar platform to Zuckerberg’s Facebook in Russia called VKontakte, is a self-styled champion of free speech and has cultivated a reputation for being unwilling to work with authorities to censor and more closely control what happens on his platform. But his arrest has raised important questions about the extent to which tech executives are responsible for how users employ their social media networks. Chris Stokel-Walker, a technology journalist, explains the implications of Durov's arrest for the tech sector * Telegram CEO charged in France for ‘allowing criminal activity’ on messaging app * What the Telegram founder’s arrest means for the regulation of social media firms Continue reading...

Pavel Durov, who has French citizenship, faces prosecution over alleged failure to suppress spread of sexual images of children and calls for violence 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. Continue reading...

Once nicknamed the ‘Russian Zuckerberg’, Durov has boasted of being the biological father of more than 100 children The Russian-born tech entrepreneur Pavel Durov has founded wildly popular social networks as well as a cryptocurrency, amassed a multibillion dollar fortune and locked horns with authorities in Russia and around the world. Still a few months shy of his 40th birthday, the man once nicknamed the “Russian Zuckerberg” after the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg now finds himself under arrest in France after being detained at a Paris airport this weekend. Continue reading...

Continue reading...

New Meta security report finds that AI-powered deception campaigns ‘provide only incremental’ results for bad actors Russia is putting generative artificial intelligence to work in online deception campaigns, but its efforts have been unsuccessful, according to a Meta security report released on Thursday. The parent company of Facebook and Instagram found that so far AI-powered tactics “provide only incremental productivity and content-generation gains” for bad actors and Meta has been able to disrupt deceptive influence operations. Continue reading...

Continue reading...

State-sponsored hacking campaigns are evolving in social engineering strategies and technical aspects Russia’s state security agency is launching increasingly sophisticated phishing attacks against US, European and Russian civil society members, in some cases by impersonating individuals who are personally close to the targets of the attacks, according to a new investigation by security researchers. A new report by the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto and Access Now comes as the FBI has separately launched an investigation into suspected hacking attempts by Iran targeting an adviser to Donald Trump and advisers to the Harris-Walz campaign. Continue reading...

Continue reading...