Telegram To Provide Law Enforcement With Suspect Data, If Requested

Telegram has made a notable policy change to its long-standing refusal to co-operate with law enforcement about users or data on its platform.

In a post founder and CEO Pavel Durov explained that in an effort to reduce criminal activity on the platform, Telegram is making some changes to its terms of service and privacy policy. Most notable, Telegram said it will hand over the IP addresses and phone numbers of users who violate its rules to authorities – but only with “valid legal requests.”

The platform also said it will disclose all user data that is shared with law enforcement officials in quarterly transparency reports.

Policy update

“If Telegram receives a valid order from the relevant judicial authorities that confirms you’re a suspect in a case involving criminal activities that violate the Telegram Terms of Service, we will perform a legal analysis of the request and may disclose your IP address and phone number to the relevant authorities,” said the messaging app in its policy document.

“If any data is shared, we will include such occurrences in a quarterly transparency report published at: https://t.me/transparency.”

Pavel Durov, the Russian-born billionaire founder and owner of Telegram, is currently in France after he was arrested in August amid a police investigation into him allegedly allowing a wide range of crimes on the platform due to a lack of content moderators, coupled with a lack of co-operation with police.

Durov had left Russia in 2014 after he refused to comply with demands to shut down opposition communities on his VK social media platform, which he sold.

Russian authorities had accused Telegram of enabling terrorists to communicate in secret, and the app was also previously used by Islamic State for propaganda purposes.

But Durov has always been vocal against the sharing of confidential data with government entities.

Criminal usage

But then in August Durov had been arrested in France and interviewed by French prosecutors over suspected criminal activity on the platform, including gang transactions and trafficking, as well as an alleged failure by the company to hand over data related to the investigation.

He was later released from police custody, with bail set at $5.56 million as the probe unfolds.

Telegram has for years faced allegations from law enforcement over its use by criminals, drug traffickers, money launderers, extremists and terror groups.

Following his arrest, Telegram had said Durov had “nothing to hide” and that it was “absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform.”

But two weeks after his arrest, Durov acknowledged in a post that the app’s “abrupt increase” in users had caused growing pains that made it easier for criminals to abuse the platform.

“Search on Telegram is more powerful than in other messaging apps because it allows users to find public channels and bots,” Durov wrote in his post on Monday. “Unfortunately, this feature has been abused by people who violated our Terms of Service to sell illegal goods.”

He added that a team of moderators aided by artificial intelligence has identified and removed “problematic content” from the public search feature. “If you still manage to find something unsafe or illegal on Telegram Search, please report it to us via @SearchReport,” Durov wrote.

“Telegram Search is meant for finding friends and discovering news, not for promoting illegal goods,” Durov said.

False flag operation?

It should be noted that the policy changes may lessen criminal activity on public areas of the platform.

However it won’t necessarily end all criminal use due to private, end-to-end encrypted chats, where Telegram has always stated it has “no ways of deciphering the actual information” from conversations.

Last week, Ukraine banned government officials, military personnel and other defence and critical infrastructure workers from installing the Telegram messaging app on their state-issued devices.

Kyiv reportedly described the move as necessary for national security, and it came amid ongoing allegations over Telegram’s links to Russia.