📰 My previous post may have seemed like it was announcing a major shift in the way Telegram works. But in reality, not much has changed.
🌐 Since 2018, Telegram has been able to disclose criminals' IP addresses/phone numbers to authorities, according to our privacy policy in most countries.
⚖️ Whenever we receive a properly formed legal request via the relevant communication lines, we verify it and disclose the IP addresses/phone numbers of dangerous criminals. This process has been in place since long before last week.
🤖 Our @transparency bot does exactly that. This bot shows the number of requests processed for user data.
✉️ For example, in Brazil, we disclosed data on 75 legal requests in Q1 (January-March) 2024, 63 in Q2, and 65 in Q3. In India, our largest market, we fulfilled 2,461 legal requests in Q1, 2,151 in Q2, and 2,380 in Q3.
📈 In Europe, we saw an increase in the number of valid legal requests we received in Q3. This increase was driven by the fact that more EU authorities started using the correct contact point for their requests, which is the one mandated by the EU Digital Data Services Act. Information about this contact point has been publicly available to anyone who has viewed the Telegram website or searched on Google for “Telegram EU law enforcement address” since early 2024.
🤝 To reduce confusion, last week we simplified and standardized our privacy policy across different countries. But our core principles have not changed. We have always sought to comply with relevant local laws — as long as they do not conflict with our values of freedom and privacy.
🛡 Telegram was built to protect activists and ordinary people from corrupt governments and corporations — and we don’t let criminals abuse our platform or evade justice.
