Iranian officials have blocked a messaging app that`s being used to organize anti-government protests which have rocked the country, resulting in more than 20 deaths and hundreds of arrests.
Telegram, a free smart phone app popular in the United States and globally, has been an organizing tool for the loosely-constructed Iranian protest movement that began last week, At first focusing on the need for jobs it has since widened to include concerns about government corruption and frustration with Iran`s clerical rulers.
Telegram is most often used as a simple messaging app but also offers end-to-end encryption and secret chat rooms. It is used by hundreds of millions of people globally and has been criticized by U. and European officials for allowing extremist groups and terrorists to communicate secretly.
The app was created by a Russian programmer, Pavel Durov, who fled his country in 2014 and now runs the company from a variety of places, which have included Berlin, London, Singapore and most recently Dubai, according to its website.
Mohammad-Javad Azari Jahromi, Iran’s Minister of Information and Communications Technology, tweeted Saturday that a Telegram channel was “encouraging hateful conduct, use of Molotov cocktails, armed uprising, and social unrest.”
Telegram CEO Durov said the company had suspended one channel that included calls to violence, which violated its terms of service. Most of the people subscribed to the channel were able to move to a new "peaceful" channel, Durov wrote.
On Tuesday Durov wrote on Twitter that while Telegram was being blocked in Iran, a rival messaging app that offers privacy, WhatsApp, was still available there.
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