A Russian court has ruled that access to the Telegram messaging service must be blocked throughout Russia. The decision was made in response to an appeal filed by the Russian state communications agency after Telegram refused to make its users' messages available to intelligence services. Pavel Durov, founder of Telegram, has repeatedly said that his company would never share user data and messages with anyone, much less with governments who requested them. In Russia the Telegram app is quite widespread and is also widely used by the authorities.
