Telegram has updated its terms of service and privacy policy. Messenger may now disclose the IP addresses and phone numbers of violators to law enforcement in response to reasonable legal requests. reported platform founder Pavel Durov.
He said that attackers used the search on Telegram to sell illegal goods. However, over the last few weeks, the moderation team has made the search more secure and the banned content is no longer available there.
If users still find illegal content in their messenger search, they can report it via the @SearchReport bot. Also, how I learned This service is currently not available in Russia, the socialbites.ca correspondent writes. When using VPN, the bot’s functionality returns to normal. It offers to send the text of the search query that the user entered and receives results with dangerous or illegal content in response.
According to Messenger’s founder, the new measures should be as follows: to scare off criminals.
“Search on Telegram is designed to find friends and news, not to promote illegal products and services. We will not allow attackers to compromise the integrity of our platform, which serves nearly a billion users.”
– concluded the businessman.
Cooperation with French authorities
On August 24, Pavel Durov was detained at Paris Le Bourget airport. In France, the founder of Telegram is suspected of insufficient supervision of the messenger. According to the gendarmerie, this circumstance and refusal to cooperate with the authorities make Durov an accomplice to a number of crimes, including the distribution of child pornography, drug dealing, money laundering, etc.
After his release, the entrepreneur said that criminals were abusing Telegram, and the rapid increase in the number of messenger users made their job easier. Durov said that countering the attackers was his personal goal.
September 20 French newspaper Le Figaro reportedHe said Telegram had begun responding to requests from French authorities, and that requests from other countries had then started coming in. The publication claimed that Durov had also “promised to cooperate with French justice and ensure that their demands are met.”
At the same time, according to the newspaper LiberationMessenger began changing its strategy and responding to the demands of French authorities immediately after the service’s founder was arrested on August 24. The publication reported that Telegram complied with the demands of the French National Police Youth Department in the context of various criminal investigations. Material was provided that could identify some suspects.
Refusing to cooperate with Russian authorities
In 2017, a law came into force in Russia that obliges telecommunications service operators to keep records of their customers’ telephone messages and Internet traffic for six months, as well as to store keys for decrypting user correspondence and provide them to the Russian FSB upon request. In the same year, the ministry made such a request to Telegram, demanding that it provide keys for decrypting messages from six people accused of organizing a terrorist attack in St. Petersburg.
But messaging developers refused to do so.
The founder of the platform, Pavel Durov, at that time statedThe FSB requirements were technically unachievable. Then he explainedHe said some of the mobile phone numbers the ministry was interested in had never had an account on Telegram, while others had been automatically deleted due to inactivity.
The businessman also said that due to the technical features of the algorithm, neither Telegram nor any other messaging app can provide encryption keys.
“The level of cooperation between Telegram and the authorities is independent of jurisdiction and is based on the same principles everywhere. Telegram processes requests to remove illegal publicly available content, including terrorist propaganda, child pornography, etc., all over the world, including Russia.
At the same time, we do not disclose users’ personal data to government institutions in any country.”
— stated Durov.
After that in April 2018, the founder of Telegram wrote on his VKontakte page wroteHe said that the removal of the right to privacy is a medicine that is more dangerous than the disease itself.
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Source: Gazeta
Jackson Ruhl is a tech and sci-fi expert, who writes for “Social Bites”. He brings his readers the latest news and developments from the world of technology and science fiction.