Mobile messaging service Telegram is racing to shut down broadcast channels used by Islamic State to promote its causes and recruit members, but the group is creating new channels apparently just as quickly.
Berlin-based Telegram, created two years ago by the founder of Russia’s most popular social network site Vkontakte, has caught on in many corners of the globe as an ultra-secure way to quickly upload and share videos, texts and voice messages.
Two months ago, a new public broadcast feature of Telegram became the preferred method for Islamic State to broadcast news and share videos of military victories or sermons, according to security researchers.
The group used Telegram to claim responsibility for the Paris attacks, which left 129 people dead, and the bombing of a Russian airliner over Egypt last month, which killed 224.
In a statement published on its site on Wednesday, Telegram said it has been able to identify and block 78 IS-related broadcast channels in 12 languages on its site.
“We were disturbed to learn that Telegram’s public channels were being used by ISIS to spread their propaganda,” it said.
Some of the IS sites blocked by Telegram quickly re-emerged in new locations on its network. Some were quickly shut down, while other relocated channels remained running.
But Frank Rieger, analyst at Chaos Computer Club, said the solution doesn’t lie in blocking or breaking encryption methods.
“We have encryption everywhere. We have it in every messenger, What’s App is today encrypted, all your banking systems are encrypted, encryption is out there. And if we were, from the beginning, to say, ‘We must be able to break encryptions as a country, that would only lead to all citizens are tapped, but not the criminal terrorists, because they use unbreakable encryption,” he told Reuters as he attended the German National IT summit in Berlin, adding that many measures of the kind only damage users.
“What they do is be primarily suspicious of people. They go into Google Translate, look at what’s inside of Twitter accounts or Facebook accounts, and guess to understand what these people say to follow like they belong to IS and communicate as such. Sorry, but this is kindergarten. It has nothing to do with an effective approach, actually it’s a field where I would say, that you should just stay away from that, as it’s happened several times already that people have gotten into trouble who have nothing to do with IS.”
Telegram, which did not respond to requests for comment, explicitly says on its site that it makes efforts to block Islamic State.
But IS supporters continue to take advantage of private members-only channels on Telegram to spread word of the new public propaganda channels.
One newly set-up channel in English called Trendit, has nearly 500 followers so far, while other jihadi channels aimed at Islamic State supporters in Indonesia remained up, analysts said.