In its revised Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, Telegram states that it may share the IP addresses and phone numbers of rule breakers with law enforcement upon "valid legal request." The update comes a month after the Telegram CEO was arrested in France.
Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of Telegram, announced the policy updates on his Telegram channel yesterday. According to Durov, criminals have hijacked Telegram Search (which lets you find people, channels, and bots) to create an illegal marketplace of goods.
“Telegram Search is meant for finding friends and discovering news, not for promoting illegal goods. We won't let bad actors jeopardize the integrity of our platform for almost a billion users,” Durov explained the crackdown. Telegram will share phone numbers and IP addresses of offenders based on "valid legal requests" across the world. To determine if the legal request is valid, Telegram will “conduct a legal analysis.” The company promises to publish quarterly transparency reports that document every legal request it fulfills.
Durov has also deployed a team of moderators and AI algorithms to clean up Telegram Search. The team has already removed some illegal content from Search, and it’s encouraging app users to report any shady stuff they come across. Telegram has created the @SearchReport bot to receive those reports which the moderator team will review.
Historically, Telegram has only "partially complied" with legal requests from authorities. Last month, French authorities arrested and detained Pavel Durov (who holds citizenship in France) for four days because Telegram ignored legal requests related to money laundering, drug trafficking, and human trafficking. After his arrest, the billionaire founder blamed Telegram's non-compliance on rapid growth, claiming that “Telegram’s abrupt increase in user count to 950M caused growing pains that made it easier for criminals to abuse our platform."
Source: Telegram