Communication app Telegram will share users’ IP addresses and phone numbers with the relevant authorities when legally permitted. Telegram CEO Pavel Durow said this in a post on Telegram on Monday. About this The Bloomberg news agency reported, among other things, that. Accordingly, the platform has changed its terms of use to prevent abuse by criminals.
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Cell phone tapping and passcode theft: SS7 is open to attacks like a barn door“To prevent criminals from abusing Telegram Search, we have updated our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy to ensure they are consistent around the world. We have made it clear that the IP addresses and phone numbers of those who violate our rules,” Duro said in his Telegram channel, adding that the IP addresses and phone numbers of those who violate our rules may be passed to the relevant authorities in response to valid legal requests.
Durov was arrested in France at the end of August. The French justice system accuses the 39-year-old billionaire of Russian origin, who has French citizenship, among other things, of complicity in the distribution of materials about child sexual abuse. Telegram is also not required to take sufficient action against the spread of criminal and extremist content on the platform. Durov described the charges as “absurd”; he has “nothing to hide.” The Telegram boss has now been released on bail but is not currently allowed to leave France.
The announcement of a willingness to cooperate more closely with the authorities can certainly be understood as a consequence of the arrests. Telegram has so far been known for its loose moderation of content and refusal to provide data to law enforcement authorities. The change in thinking was already noticeable in early September, when the Telegram boss promised better moderation of content and announced that he wanted to do more to combat criminals’ conspiracies on the platform. Now Duro reports that over the past few weeks, a team of moderators using artificial intelligence (AI) has made Telegram search more secure and started hiding suspicious content from search results. “All problematic content we identified in search is now inaccessible.”
In the past, Telegram has repeatedly incurred the ire of governments of EU countries, as well as states such as Russia and Iran, due to its refusal to cooperate with authorities. The app was used by government opponents to organize themselves, but it also became a magnet for conspiracy theorists and extremists.
(AKN)
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