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.
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 according to what standard ? In some countries, activism or sympathy with a cause is considered criminal behavior.
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.
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. 😂
Everyone was told, from the outset , not to trust telegram. Amnesty International, the EFF, the cryptography community all said this as long as 10 years ago.
It’s actually pathetic to read a Russian talking about how it was “built for activists and not criminals “ . What a worm.
This is really simple. Use Signal or WIRE. Proton or maybe Tutanota for email.
Avoid garbage like Telegram and FB Messenger. Discord as well.
Wire isn’t that great. Definitely avoid email as it is riddled with problems that aren’t easily fixable despite what the email companies tell you.
Simplex Chat, Signal or possibly Matrix
I use Wire. Its the best option right now. Better than SimpleX, Signal, and Matrix for many reasons
It really isn’t though
It is less secure, less private and less user friendly and is run by a company who I question.
There seems to be a gross misunderstanding of how everything works here. Any platform will need to provide data to authorities when “asked properly” - as in, receives an actual order from some enforcing body that has authority on the subject in question. No commercial company will fight the CIA in court to protect your data. The best you can hope for is that they minimize what kind of data they collect about you in the first place - in the case of E2EE, they will only have access to IPs and other metadata such as connection timestamps and nothing else. But all of the services you listed will collect at least IPs and most will do phone numbers as well. The only difference with Telegram is that they’re transparent about it. You can either avoid using commercial platforms altogether, or use them in a way such that data retrieved from them will be useless. But believing that “Signal will never give my IP to law enforcement” is delusional.
Signal just somehow forgets to store your IP address. So, their response will be “here are our logs, that phone number last time logged in yesterday, that’s all we got”
Does those apps have unlimited storage? Channel with unlimited subscribers? Or much more
I see a lot of people mention WIRE recently. Did everyone collectively forget how they sold out in 2019 and removed their canary (aka. compromised)?
In July 2019 Wire raised $8.2m investment from Morpheus Ventures and others. On July 18 of the same month, 100% of the company’s shares have been taken over by Wire Holdings Inc., Delaware, USA.
ok this feels like a real hot take. but i am somewhat glad about this. in my country telegram has the reputation to be the nazi (and sometimes the pedo-) app. so i am not unhappy those people online activity can be used against them in court. That beeing said i can respect people who feel otherwise.
I’m with you. If they’re verifying the information request, as in vetting it to determine if there is actual criminal behavior going on i.e. pedos/money laundering/etc, then good. Hand them over to the authorities.
They state that they don’t cater to corrupt governments or organizations - good.
Everyone here arguing against these things are throwing up major red flags. Didn’t the CEO just go to court because he wasn’t handing over information willy nilly? I would hope Signal and Proton would be doing the same things.
I am not sure that this news relates to passing the content of telegram messages to any authority. If i read it correctly it is just about sharing personal information such as ip adress, phone number etc.
i do not get that from the resources provided here and havent heard about that either… the ip adress ect. is shared with authorities only, which i personaly dont disagree with per se. maybe i was unclear i my first coment about that tho.
If you got info about telegram sharing that info with private institutions, and are willing to share, id love to read that. that would make me deinstall the app rather quickly ^^
Telegram was built to protect activists and ordinary people from corrupt governments and corporation
Didn’t they announce that they were no longer sending data to China about users participating in the Hong Kong unrest, implying that they were giving data.
