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US citizen allegedly used fake eBay sales to hide ISIS funding
According to FBI records, US citizen Mohamed Elshinawy used fake eBay sales to bring in ISIS funding for terror attacks, reports the Wall Street Journal. As part of a financial network with operatives in Britain and Bangladesh, Elshinawy pretended to sell printers on the site in order to get PayPal payments from Islamic State groups abroad.
Your Telegram chats now include disappearing photos
Telegram's messaging app is better known for its security than catering to Snapchat fans, but it's blurring those lines. The company has updated its mobile apps with support for disappearing photos and videos in any private chat. All you have to do is set a timer for your media and it'll vanish. If the recipient gets sneaky and takes a screenshot, you'll know right away. In short: much as with services like Snapchat or iMessage, you shouldn't have to worry that a sensitive pic will leak to the public.
Telegram will register with Russia but won't share secure data
A few days ago, we reported that Russia's communications regulator demanded that messaging app Telegram hand over information, including decrypted user messages, or risk being banned from the country. Now, Reuters reports that Telegram has agreed to register with the Russian government but will not hand over any user data or messages.
Russia threatens to ban Telegram if it doesn’t hand over data
Russia's communications regulator has demanded Telegram turn over information about the messaging app and the company behind it or risk being blocked. Founder Pavel Durov said that Telegram had also been asked to give the Russian government access to decrypt user messages, all in the name of catching terrorists.
Telegram founder says US government tried to bribe developers
Dismissed as a WhatsApp clone when it launched in August 2013, Telegram has grown like a weed. The messaging service now counts more than 100 million monthly active users, who have flocked to the platform to play games, make video calls, interact with bots and, perhaps most importantly, benefit from its end-to-end encryption. Telegram's size and its desire to keep private messages truly private (although that has been debated) likely made it the target of US government, which reportedly tried to bribe its developers and influence its founder Pavel Durov last year.
Pay for your next pizza without ever leaving Telegram
The latest update to messaging app Telegram has added a couple of welcome features to the platform that presents itself as a secure alternative to WhatsApp. The first enables users to record minute-long videos to send to one another instead of having to type out their feelings using boring old words. Telegram is boasting that sending these clips will be much faster than other services, since the video is compressed and transmitted while you record.
Opera's new browser comes with WhatsApp and Messenger built in
Thanks to add-ons and extensions, modern browsers are capable of much more than just accessing websites. However, unless you know what you're looking for, finding useful tools isn't necessarily easy. Instead of relying solely on its extension marketplace, Opera hopes to claw back market share from Google Chrome by incorporating additional features into its eponymous software. We've already seen it roll out low-power mode and a fully-featured VPN, but now it's making things a lot more social by integrating messaging apps like WhatsApp, Messenger and Telegram into its sidebar.
ISIS created its own social network to spread propaganda
Social media has been a main tool for Islamic State militants to spread propaganda and recruit members for years now. But as companies like Twitter and Telegram continue to crack down on ISIS accounts, militants appear to be building their own private social networks to further their communications efforts. European Police Office (Europol) director Rob Wainwright said at a security conference in London that a new network was discovered during a two-day operation against Islamic extremism. According to Reuters, Europol conducted the operation along with the United States, Belgium, Greece, Poland and Portugal; it uncovered more than 2,000 extremist "items" across a total of 52 online networks.
Telegram's voice calls are secured by emojis
Questions about security have plagued messaging app Telegram recently, since the platform was supposedly cracked by Russia's state security agency during the election. Telegram uses its own security protocols instead of more tried-and-true options, which has been a point of criticism. Now, Telegram is adding voice calls to its offerings, and those calls will be secured by emojis.
RadiTo podcast app sidesteps Iran's censorship
Fighting censorship has become an active part of life in the future we live in. To help combat it in Iran, the RadiTo app offers programming from the BBC, Iran's Radio Farda and Radio Zamaneh from Amsterdam. As Wired reports, it's available on Android and is "uniquely suited to the conditions of the country's internet." Meaning, it apparently works on slow data networks, shows can be downloaded for offline listening and programming is in a variety of under-served dialects.
A whole new low in government trust
Our country changed so quickly in the past week that it feels like the pod doors have been sealed shut and an antigravity switch flipped inside our borders. From the outside, it probably looks like a snowglobe scene of hell. The Doomsday Clock advanced, "thanks to Trump," and it's now only two and a half minutes to nuclear midnight, while The Economist's Democracy Index downgraded the US from "full democracy" to "flawed."
Telegram updates desktop app with new look
In the midst of (yet another) security scare, Telegram has updated its desktop app. The new app (version 1.0) features a thorough redesign, bringing the experience more in line with Google's Material Design aesthetic, complete with animations and support for themes. Version 1.0 also supports deleting messages from the company's servers, a feature that was already available in the mobile app. (Previously, deleting a message from a chat on the desktop would only remove it from the device you're using.) Like editing, deletion only works on recently sent messages.
Telegram's unsend feature can help prevent texting regret
Telegram's latest update adds a feature that would've been pretty useful this past holiday season: it gives you a way to unsend messages you regret. Unsend works for both one-to-one and group chats, so long as you do it with within 48 hours of hitting send. Apparently, one of the messaging app's engineers conjured up the solution when he accidentally sent some risqué Santa stickers to his mother. We don't know how true that is, but if you think the feature would be especially useful, you've got that careless, likely drunk, engineer to thank. Of course, you can't stop anyone from reading or screencapping what you've already written in chat, so you may want to keep locking up your phone if you tend to send drunk texts.
Telegram launches a blogging platform for the impatient
If you've ever wanted to write something online really quickly but didn't want to go through the hassle of signing up for a Medium, Wordpress or Blogger account, maybe Telegram's new Telegraph platform is for you. The messaging app launched the service today, and as VentureBeat notes, it's really fast. Dropping links to Twitter posts and YouTube videos automatically embeds them, and you can upload photos, too. For example, this post took me under five minutes to go from a blank page to being published.
Putin congratulates Trump with a telegram
Who said that classic telegrams were dead? Certainly not Vladimir Putin. The Russian leader congratulated Donald Trump on his presidential election victory by sending him a telegram -- yes, of the old-school variety and not the secure messaging app. The message expressed a desire to deescalate tensions between Russia and the US and find "effective responses" to international security issues.
Chat app Telegram is now a gaming platform too
If a company has a messaging app, there's a good chance that chat bots are headed its way. Case in point, today secure-chat service Telegram announced a bot-powered gaming platform. While the app has had text-based games for a while, today's announcement means those distractions will now have HTML 5 graphics and sound.
Iranian hackers compromise Telegram's secure messaging
Telegram prides itself on private messaging that lets activists escape government censorship and crackdowns, but it might have a crisis on its hands in Iran. Security researchers speaking to Reuters say that an Iranian hacking group has not only breached over a dozen Telegram accounts, but identified the phone numbers of over 15 million of the service's users in the country. The intruders reportedly intercepted SMS authentication codes and used those to add devices to their accounts, letting them read messages and impersonate others. To get the phone numbers, they took advantage of a Telegram programming interface.
Iran orders messaging app makers to store data inside the country
Iran's attempts to stifle dissenting views through online censorship don't usually work all that well, so it's trying a new strategy: bringing more of that data within its own borders. It's ordering messaging app developers to move all their Iranian users' data to the country within the next year if they want to "ensure their continued activity." It's not hard to see Iran would do this, of course -- in theory, this makes it easy to delete unwanted content, spy on traffic and seize servers.
ISIS releases learning app to teach kids about tanks and rockets
A new Android app from the tech-savvy extremist group ISIS hopes to help out busy ISIS parents by teaching their kids to read and militarizing them at the same time. The app, called Huroof, was released via the Islamic State's Telegram channel and includes games for learning the letters of the Arabic alphabet with militaristic vocabulary words like "tank" and "rocket."
Instagram blocks users from linking to Telegram and Snapchat
You know that website section in your Instagram bio? It's the only place on the social network where you can deeplink to other parts of the internet, and IG celebs often use it to let fans know where else they can be found. It still works as intended, but it has suddenly stopped supporting Telegram and Snapchat links, as TechCrunch reported. An IG spokesperson confirmed to TC that it has "removed the ability to include 'add me' links" to profiles." He said that it was "not the way [their] platform was intended to be used," but that "other types of links are still allowed."
