Telegram U-turns on privacy policy by providing user phone numbers to police

Policy update comes less than a month after CEO Pavel Durov was arrested near Paris

This picture taken on 5 October 2020 shows the logo of mobile messaging and call service Telegram on a tablet screen in Toulouse, southwestern France (Getty Images)

Telegram has introduced a major update to its privacy policy that will see the messaging app share user data with authorities in response to legal requests.

The move comes less than a month after chief executive Pavel Durov was arrested in France following an investigation into the app’s alleged lack of moderation.

Mr Durov said the latest Telegram update, which is a major shift from its previous privacy-focussed approach, is aimed at deterring criminal activity on the platform.

“To further deter criminals from abusing Telegram Search, we have updated our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, ensuring they are consistent across the world,” he wrote in a post to his official channel on Telegram.

“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. These measures should discourage criminals. Telegram Search is meant for finding friends and discovering news, not for promoting illegal goods. We won’t let bad actors jeopardise the integrity of our platform for almost a billion users.”

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The investigation that led to Mr Durov’s arrest remains ongoing, with a police spokesperson saying that it related to a lack of compliance with cyber and financial crimes allegedly conducted on Telegram.

The platform has denied any allegations, claiming that it follows industry standards when it comes to content moderation and abides with EU laws.

“It is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform,” a company spokesperson said following Mr Durov’s arrest.

The tech billionaire rejected claims that Telegram was “some sort of anarchic paradise”, though admitted following his release from custody that a surge in users “caused growing pains that made it easier for criminals to abuse our platform”.

He defended himself from the investigation, writing: “Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to charge a CEO with crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a misguided approach.

“Building technology is hard enough as it is. No innovator will ever build new tools if they know they can be personally held responsible for potential abuse of those tools.”