Messaging app Telegram has tweaked its policies to be able to share more data with government authorities — a major shift for the platform that has faced years of criticism for letting drug trafficking, cybercrime and child sexual abuse material run rampant on its channels.
Telegram’s Chief Executive Officer Pavel Durov said Monday the platform had changed its privacy policy to reflect it may disclose IP addresses and phone numbers of suspected criminals when it gets an order from relevant judicial authorities. Up until now, Telegram’s policy was only to disclose data on suspected terrorists upon a court order.
“We’ve made it clear that the IP addresses and phone numbers of those who violate our rules can be disclosed to relevant authorities in response to valid legal requests,” Durov wrote in a message on his Telegram channel.
The changes come one month after Durov was arrested in Paris on charges that his platform was complicit in illicit activity on the app and that it refused to cooperate with authorities. Durov is currently out on bail and can’t leave France.
Durov had previously gotten strong support of right-wing free speech advocates including X owner Elon Musk over his longstanding refusal to give governments access to his platform’s data. The promise to keep data confidential has attracted everyone from organized crime cartels to political dissident groups in repressive regimes and the Russian and Ukrainian military to use Telegram.
The Russian-born tech entrepreneur said on Telegram that the platform’s search function was “abused” to sell illegal goods. He added that a team of moderators has made the function “much safer” over the last weeks.
Telegram will also publish more frequent transparency reports, sharing data on how often it cooperated with authorities. The new privacy policy says that this will happen quarterly instead of every six months.
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