Report: Encrypted app Telegram reaches agreement with Russia

Russia and the encrypted messaging service Telegram have reached an agreement to allow the app to continue operating in the country, according to Reuters.

Pavel Durov, Telegram’s founder, agreed to register the company in Russia, but said that he would not share users’ data with authorities.

{mosads}”We won’t comply with … laws that are incompatible with Telegram’s confidentiality policy or protecting people’s private lives,” he wrote on social media.

Last week, Russian regulators had threatened to block Telegram unless it handed over information about its operations.

And Russian intelligence officials said that the app had been used by terrorists to coordinate a suicide bombing earlier this year in St. Petersburg.

“If you want to defeat terrorism by blocking stuff, you’ll have to block the internet,” Durov wrote in a post earlier this week.