Telegram CEO Pavel Durov recently announced that Telegram would be handing over user data (such as phone numbers and IP adresses) to the authorities. Now it turns out that it has been doing so since 2018.
My previous post may have seemed to announce a major shift in how Telegram works. But in reality, little has changed.
Since 2018, Telegram has been able to disclose IP addresses/phone numbers of criminals to authorities, according to our Privacy Policy in most countries.
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.
To reduce confusion, last week, we streamlined and unified our privacy policy across different countries.
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.
Full text of the post.
📰 My previous post may have seemed to announce a major shift in how Telegram works. But in reality, little has changed.
🌐 Since 2018, Telegram has been able to disclose IP addresses/phone numbers of criminals to authorities, according to our Privacy Policy in most countries.
⚖️ 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.
🤖 Our @transparency bot demonstrates exactly that. This bot shows the number of processed requests for user data.
✉️ 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.
📈 In Europe, there was an uptick in the number of valid legal requests we received in Q3. This increase was caused by the fact that more EU authorities started to use the correct communication line for their requests, the one mandated by the EU DSA law. Information about this contact point has been publicly available to anyone who viewed the Telegram website or googled “Telegram EU address for law enforcement” since early 2024.
🤝 To reduce confusion, last week, we streamlined and unified our privacy policy across different countries. But our core principles haven’t changed. We’ve always strived to comply with relevant local laws — as long as they didn’t go against our values of freedom and privacy.
🛡 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.
Criminals according to what standard ? In some countries, activism or sympathy with a cause is considered criminal behavior.
Evade justice ?? What justice is he talking about? The justice of the United States of America, Chinese justice, or the justice of the nationalities he possesses?
Better to avoid this platform
Criminals like Edward Snowden I guess
As a Russian he should know better anyone the difference between an Activist and a criminal is one phone call from the FSB
You are 100% correct!
When governments are corrupt; rebellion is the same as criminal, because you are going against the government. That is the whole problem.
PoliScie 101.
Even the US founders hinted at this issue, if not outright called it out and added some protections for the plebs via a few amendments… But normies got nothing to hide 🤡
Exactly!
It is a slippery slope.
Even with services like Proton (big company in the privacy realm) etc, you can only fully trust yourself.
That’s why documents are always client side encrypted before I send my data, to any cloud platform.
Exactly. I will never understand why people have their secret GPG-key on services like Tuta or Proton instead of on their own devices. 😂
Justice he dicides on and can get away with.