According to founder and CEO Pavel Durov, crypto-friendly instant messenger Telegram has been disclosing IP addresses of criminals to authorities since 2018.
Durov took to his Telegram channel on Oct. 2 to clarify his recent post about disclosures of IPs and phone addresses of accounts found to be involved in criminal activity.
An excerpt from Durov’s latest post on user data disclosures on Telegram. Source Du Rove’s Channel (Telegram)
“My previous post may have seemed to announce a major shift in how Telegram works. But in reality, little has changed,” Durov said in his most recent communication.
Telegram’s account disclosures were in place “long before last week”
According to Durov, Telegram has been able to disclose IP addresses and phone numbers of criminals to authorities since 2018, in accordance with its privacy policies in “most countries.” He wrote:
“Whenever we received a properly formed legal request via relevant communication lines, we would verify it and disclose the IP addresses/phone numbers of dangerous criminals. This process had been in place long before last week.”
Durov cited data from Telegram’s Transparency Bot, which is designed to provide users with the number of processed requests for data disclosures from authorities.
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“For example, in Brazil, we disclosed data for 75 legal requests in Q1 (January-March) 2024, 63 in Q2, and 65 in Q3. In India, our largest market, we satisfied 2461 legal requests in Q1, 2151 in Q2, and 2380 in Q3,” Durov said.
Check out Cointelegraph’s guide to learn more about the untold story of Telegram founder Pavel Durov.
Telegram’s core principles haven’t changed, CEO says
Durov said the news from last week showed that Telegram has been “streamlining and unifying its privacy policy across different countries.”
He stressed that Telegram’s core principles haven’t changed, as the company has always sought to comply with relevant local laws, “as long as they didn’t go against our values of freedom and privacy.” He added:
“Telegram was built to protect activists and ordinary people from corrupt governments and corporations — we do not allow criminals to abuse our platform or evade justice.”
Durov’s clarification on Telegram’s data disclosure policies comes about a month after French authorities indicted the CEO on six charges related to illicit activity on the messenger app on Aug. 28.
After being released on a $5.5 million bail on Sept. 5, Durov broke his silence on social media for the first time following his arrest, claiming that the charges were “misguided.”
Source: Pavel Durov
The Telegram CEO has since been actively updating users on the messenger’s measures to combat illicit activity on the platform.
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