Telegram has quietly changed its privacy policy following the arrest of its CEO, Pavel Durov, in France. It now states that it will comply with legal requests to identify users’ phone numbers and IP addresses. The tech company made the change on Monday, stating that it will comply as long as there is a valid legal request for user information.
The new policy is a massive departure from Telegram’s previous stance, which saw the company only disclose IP addresses or user phone numbers if a user was a terror suspect.
The announcement of the changes was made on the official Telegram channel of the company’s CEO, Pavel Durov, who was arrested in France in August is charged with complicity in several crimes, from fraud and drug trafficking to the spreading of child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
“We’ve made it clear that the IP addresses and phone numbers of those who violate our rules can be disclosed to relevant authorities in response to valid legal requests,” Durov said Monday.
“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,” he added.
French authorities previously requested information from Telegram at least 2,400 times before arresting Durov, but had been ignored by the company.
Governments worldwide have wanted to crack down on Telegram for years, including German politicians who called the app a threat to democracy during the COVID-19 lockdowns because the platform was used to organize protests.
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