On his own Telegram channel, Pavlo Durov gave assurances that the social network allegedly revealed data on criminals long before they clicked on him. He commented on his own post dated September 23, in which he vowed to fight illegal activity and transfer violators’ data to the police.

Durov assures that Telegram has previously transmitted criminals’ data

My previous post may seem to announce big changes in Telegram. But in reality, not much has changed. As of 2018, Telegram may disclose criminals’ IP addresses/phone numbers to authorities in accordance with our privacy policy in most countries. Once we receive a legitimate request through appropriate communication channels, we would investigate it and expose the IP addresses/phone numbers of dangerous criminals. This process was established well before last week.
wrote.

As an example, he cited the @transparency bot, which shows the number of requests processed for user data. In Brazil, the network announced data on 75 legal claims in the first quarter (January-March) of 2024, 63 in the second quarter and 65 in the third quarter. In India, its largest market, 2,461 legal claims were processed in Q1, 2,151 in Q2 and 2,380 in Q3.

“In Europe, the number of legitimate legal inquiries we received increased in Q3. This increase was due to more EU authorities starting to use the correct contact line for their inquiries under EU DSA law. Information on this contact person is publicly available. Durov said: “This feature “From the beginning of 2024, it will be available to anyone who browses the Telegram website for law enforcement or Google’s Telegram EU address,” he wrote.

The entrepreneur said last week that they are organizing and unifying privacy policies in different countries “to reduce confusion.”

But our basic principles have not changed. We have always tried to comply with applicable local laws unless they conflict with our values ​​of freedom and privacy. Telegram was created to protect activists and ordinary people from corrupt governments and corporations; We do not allow criminals to abuse our platform or evade justice.
– concluded the businessman.

Is Durov telling the truth?

French law enforcement claimed that the reporter did not respond to their demands. However, after Durov was detained, the platform’s administration began to quickly respond to the requests of the French gendarmerie and the Minors Office (Ofmin) of the national police.

Also on September 6, Durov promised to moderate more content on the platform. We’re most likely talking about private and group chats. Police claimed the messaging platform was being used to distribute child sexual abuse material and trade drugs, and that the questions were specifically about chat rooms.

Likewise, Ukrainian officials have repeatedly complained that Telegram did not contact them when contacted and effectively ignored requests. So the government has restricted the use of messenger for certain categories.