National Security concerns have made the governments of many countries ban some web-based products and services in recent times. For instance, last year, the government of United States has banned the use of Anti Malware solution of Kaspersky labs due to the concern that the software installed on the PCs of US users was conducting espionage and was sending the data to the servers located in Russia.
In the same way, the Australian government decided to ban the Chinese messenger service named “WeChat” from being used in military operations.
Now the latest to join the list is the Iranian government which has decided to ban the usage of popular messenger app ‘Telegram’.
According to the Tehran based news source Mashreghnews.it, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the head of the parliamentary committee on the National Security and Foreign policy has decided to ban the usage of the app in the country and replace it with a similar local system.
Since, the government of Iran felt that the usage of the Telegram app by a certain section of populace played a destructive role in anti-government protests that began in the late December, blocking its usage might help in achieving national peace.
Readers of Cybersecurity Insiders have to make a note of the fact that the December violence in Iran resulted in the death of at least 25 people and led to the arrest of more than 5,000 people.
The telegram which is being used by more than 40 million users in Iran was shut down in January this year. But as the populace of Iran were using proxies and VPN services to access it still, the government of Tehran has decided to completely ban the Telegram app from access and use.
Hence, all the Internet service providers including mobile operators will receive a notification of the Telegram app from early this week. And the government of Iran is planning to impose the ban with immediate effect.
Note- Telegram is a cloud-based messaging app which is available in web and mobile version. It is an instant message app which can be accessed from Android, iOS, Windows Phone and MacOs platforms. Users of the app can send text messages, images, photos, stickers, audio and video files of any type via this platform- a service which mimics Microsoft Skype in all variants.
