Telegram will better cooperate with law enforcement agencies and hand over the IP addresses and phone numbers of users in response to “valid requests”, in a major policy change from the encrypted messaging platform just weeks after the arrest of its founder.
Telegram CEO and founder Pavel Durov was arrested in Paris in August and later charged with complicity relating to crimes being perpetrated on Telegram, including the distribution of child abuse material and hacking software.
He was also charged with refusing to cooperate with investigations into this illegal activity on Telegram.
Telegram is an encrypted messaging and social media platform popular in Russia, Ukraine and former Soviet Union states.
The app now has nearly 1 billion users.
In a post on Telegram this week, Durov announced a significant reversal in the company’s notorious refusal to work with law enforcement agencies, saying that the company would now hand over details on its users to authorities under valid legal requests.
This has been flagged through changes to Telegram’s terms of service.
“We won’t let bad actors jeopardise the integrity of our platform for almost a billion users,” Durov said in the post.
The company has also been more proactive in attempting to weed out “problematic content” and ensure it does not appear in search results.
This has been done in recent weeks with the help of AI technology to ensure “all the problematic content we identified in Search is no longer accessible”, Durov said.
In the post, Durov said the Telegram search function had been “abused by people who violated [its] terms of service to sell illegal goods”.
It’s a major change for the company, which was founded by Durov in 2013 and has a reputation for lax moderation and an unwillingness to assist law enforcement investigating potential criminality on the encrypted platform.
Telegram has previously boasted about its “revolutionary” privacy policy and that it never passes over any information on its users to law enforcement.
Following questioning in 2015 over the use of Telegram by the Islamic State, Durov said that “our right for privacy is more important than our fear of bad things happening, like terrorism”.
While many of Telegram’s rivals have adopted end-to-end encryption, Telegram does not, and unless users purposefully set up a “secret chat”, the company is still able to read messages being sent on the platform.
Durov, who was born in Russia but holds a French passport, has been dubbed “Russia’s Mark Zuckerberg” and is estimated to be worth nearly $23 billion.
War of words
Durov was arrested at a Paris airport in August and charged in September with crimes relating to his alleged complicity with the distribution of child abuse material, illicit drugs and hacking software on Telegram.
French prosecutor Laure Beccuau also cited an “almost complete absence of response from Telegram to judicial demands”.
Durov has been released on a near-$8 million bail.
In a statement following Durov’s arrest, Telegram said the founder had “nothing to hide” and that he should not be held responsible for the illicit content on the platform.
“It is absurd to claim that a platform or its owners are responsible for abuse of that platform,” the company statement said.
“Almost a billion users globally use Telegram as a means of communication and as a source of vital information.
“We’re awaiting a prompt resolution of this situation.”
The arrest and charging of Durov led to outcry on social media, with numerous accounts on X branding it undemocratic.
X owner Elon Musk backed the Telegram founder with a post featuring “FreePavel”, while whistleblower Edward Snowden said the arrest “lowers not only France, but the world”.
