Durov denies reports on Telegram’s work on ways to skirt blocking

MOSCOW, Jun 28 (PRIME) -- Telegram’s founder Pavel Durov has denied media reports that the messenger was working on a simple method to skirt possible muting of the service by Russian authorities, he said late on Tuesday on his VKontakte page.

“Russian mass media periodically take information from unofficial Russian-speaking channels about Telegram and present them as an address of our team,” Durov said.

“In particular, now media are actively quoting (daily) RBC that wrote about certain ‘two clicks’ to skirt blocking, referring to ‘Telegram’s team’. See through the trick. All official statements about possible blocking or ways to cheat it will be published in the Telegram blog on the Web site telegram.org.”

Telegram does not have any Russian-speaking channels, and the only way to communicate in Russian on behalf of the official Telegram is Durov’s VKontakte page, as he said.

On June 23, Alexander Zharov, director of the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, called publicly on Telegram to follow the law by filling in a form and submitting it to the service to be added to the register of organizers of information distribution or be blocked.

Durov said then that Russia would not win from possible blocking of the service in the light of the U.S.’ control over other messengers, and correspondence of Russian officials would flow to the U.S.-controlled clouds Apple iCloud/Google Drive via WhatsApp and Viber.

The potential blocking will not make the communication more difficult for terrorists and drug dealers thanks to abundance of other messengers run on virtual private networks (VPN), Durov said earlier.

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