A Survey Of the Privacy Preferences and Practices of Iranian Users of Telegram

Abstract

Telegram is a secure messaging application that offers a wide variety of privacy and security features, but these features must be activated or chosen by users, rather than being turned on by default. At the same time, Telegram has a large number of users in Iran, who may potentially have a high need for privacy and security. In this paper, we present a survey of about 400 Iranian users of Telegram, living both inside and outside of Iran, exploring their privacy preferences and their use of Telegram's available privacy and security features. We find that the overwhelming majority of respondents feel it is important that messaging applications protect the privacy of their messages, yet their adoption of the available privacy and security features is mixed. We discuss in detail these varying practices and how the design of Telegram influences adoption of various features. We finish by discussing recommendations for improving the design of Telegram and similar secure messaging applications so that they place a greater priority on protecting privacy.

University Students’ Use and Perceptions of Telegram to Promote Effective Educational Interactions: A Qualitative Study

“…The app offers multiple security settings that offer users extra privacy. These include hiding user phone numbers from the public, providing two-step verification, controlling who is able to see the "last seen" status, and blocking other users to prevent them from seeing the blocker's messages [7]. Secret chat is another great Telegram feature that protects users from censoring with client-to-client encryption that offers message selfdestruction [8], [7].…”

“…These include hiding user phone numbers from the public, providing two-step verification, controlling who is able to see the "last seen" status, and blocking other users to prevent them from seeing the blocker's messages [7]. Secret chat is another great Telegram feature that protects users from censoring with client-to-client encryption that offers message selfdestruction [8], [7]. Polls also serve as voting tools that can settle disagreements between users or allow them to report their availability for events; these can be anonymous or not.…”

Understanding User Perceptions of Security and Privacy for Group Chat: A Survey of Users in the US and UK

“…Even when users do adopt secure messaging applications, they do not always configure them correctly or take advantage of the security features [36]. For example, Telegram users were found to use the less secure default chat mode [1].…”

“…Secure messaging tools have become an integral part of modern society-for example, the top 3 messenger tools (WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and WeChat) have a combined 3 billion user accounts. 1 In spite of the popularity of these tools, researchers have identified significant problems with their security and usability [3,12,22,36,38]. In particular, when users misunderstand or misconfigure these tools, they risk exposing their sensitive data.…”

I Don't Even Have to Bother Them!

“…This typically involves users needing to scan a QR code, if they are in the same location, or making a phone call and comparing the key fingerprint verbally. Unfortunately, research has shown that users are not able to find or perform the authentication ceremony in current secure messaging applications [1,4,7,12,13].…”