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Weeks after his arrest, Telegram’s founder Pavel Durov reveals new terms and conditions that will put a dampener on illegal activity on the platform.
Embattled tech entrepreneur Pavel Durov has announced sweeping changes to the terms and conditions of his messaging platform, Telegram, in order to curb criminal usage of the platform.
Durov announced the changes in a 23 September post to his own Telegram channel, announcing that Telegram will now cooperate with requests from law enforcement agencies.
“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,” Durov told his more than 13 million followers.
“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.”
Under the heading of “Who your personal data may be shared with”, Telegram’s Privacy Policy now says the following:
“If Telegram receives a valid order from the relevant judicial authorities that confirms you’re a suspect in a case involving criminal activities that violate the Telegram Terms of Service, we will perform a legal analysis of the request and may disclose your IP address and phone number to the relevant authorities.”
Additionally, any shared data will be publicly listed in a quarterly transparency report.
Previously, Telegram’s policy said that it “may” disclose such data only if the company received a court order regarding terrorist activity. Criminal activity was not, until now, mentioned as a possible trigger for disclosure.
Durov also announced changes to the platform’s content moderation system.
“Search on Telegram is more powerful than in other messaging apps because it allows users to find public channels and bots. Unfortunately, this feature has been abused by people who violated our Terms of Service to sell illegal goods,” Durov said.
“Over the last few weeks, a dedicated team of moderators, leveraging AI, has made Telegram Search much safer. All the problematic content we identified in Search is no longer accessible.”
To quote Durov, the Russian-born billionaire was arrested in “the last few weeks” and charged with a range of offences regarding the moderation – or lack thereof – of Telegram and the use of the platform by drug traffickers, hacktivist groups, and other cyber criminals.
Despite Telegram’s attempts to clean up its act, doubts still hang over the platform in some quarters. Ukraine announced last week that it was banning the use of the messaging app on all military and government devices due to Russian espionage concerns and the fact that many Russian hacking groups use the platform to facilitate attacks on Ukrainian targets.
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.
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