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Iran Bans Use of Telegram Messaging App To Protect 'National Security' (reuters.com)
Iran has banned all use of the popular Telegram messaging app. The ban had been introduced to protect "national security," said a statement aired on state television. From a report: Iran had been considering the ban since January when protests over economic grievances erupted in more than 80 cities and later turned into demonstrations against the clerical and security elite of the Islamic Republic. Some hardline officials said protesters used Telegram to organize the rallies, which were ultimately contained by the Revolutionary Guards and their affiliated volunteer Basij militia. The app was temporarily blocked in January. "Considering various complaints against the Telegram social networking app by Iranian citizens, and based on the demand of security organizations to confront the illegal activities of Telegram, the judiciary has banned its usage in Iran," state TV reported. "All Internet providers in Iran must take steps to block Telegram's website and app as of April 30," the judiciary website Mizan quoted a court order as saying.
"I distinctly remember that Telegram's encryption sucks."
If it sucked, it would pretty weird for both Russia and Iran to ban and block it.
Telegram operates in a simpler less secure mode by default, and when you want true end-to-end encryption you need to explicitly start a 'private chat'.
The default mechanism cloud stores the messages, which lets you have messages sync'd to multiple devices etc, lets you send messages when the other person is offline.
The 'secret chat' mechanism is end-to-end single device to single device, and it only works when the other party is online (so the messages aren't stored and forwarded by telegram, but directly sent between devices. And if you logout the key for the chat is deleted, so the messages are gone if you log back in. It also has gimmicks like expiring self destruct messages etc. (Naturally, the recipient can do the usual stuff to keep a self-destructing message... but it does mean if law enforcement or something gets your phone old messages will be gone.
So it sounds like the default isn't really much better than skype or whatever, but the private chat mechanism appears to be getting a ringing endorsement from both Russia and Iran now.