Pavel Durov defends Telegram’s privacy changes amid user concerns

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov today defended recent changes to his platform, expressing concerns that his arrest in France has made the messaging app more compliant with legal requests to share user data with authorities.

Durov has tried to minimize the significance of changes made to the app since he was arrested in August and charged with complicity in a number of crimes, including distributing sexual images of children. He is banned from leaving France for six months and must report to a police station twice a week.

In his post, the 39-year-old indirectly addressed speculation that as a result of the arrest, Telegram may strengthen its notoriously light content moderation. “Our basic principles have not changed,” Durov emphasized in a post on the platform. “We have always strived to comply with applicable local laws unless they conflict with our values ​​of freedom and privacy.”

He attributed a recent increase in the number of EU legal requests received and deemed valid by the app over the past few months to European authorities starting to use a valid email address on Telegram.

However, since Durov’s arrest, Telegram has made a number of subtle changes. In late August, the company’s FAQ page said: “To date, we have disclosed 0 bytes of user data to third parties, including governments.” Now the phrase “user data” has been replaced by the term “user messages”. Telegram did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment asking what exactly this change means.

Then, in early September, Telegram quietly allowed users to report illegal content in private and group chats for moderators to review. Later that month, Durov also announced that Telegram had changed its terms of use to prevent criminals from abusing the app and released user locations in response to legal requests. “We have clarified that the IP addresses and phone numbers of people who violate our rules may be disclosed to the appropriate authorities,” he said at the time.

Today, Durov dismissed these changes as a technical matter. “Since 2018, Telegram may reveal IP addresses/phone numbers of criminals to authorities,” he explained. Although he said last week that privacy policies across countries had been “harmonized,” he insisted that “not much has actually changed.”

However, Durov’s tone changed. For years, Telegram cultivated an image as a proudly anti-government and politically neutral platform, while governments and digital rights groups bemoaned how difficult it was to contact its moderators.

There are now signs that Durov is taking a more conciliatory attitude towards the authorities. This caused panic among some of the app’s less discerning users, including German extremists and Russian military bloggers, who expressed fears that the CEO’s arrest could be an attempt to gain access to their data. Durov’s message today was another warning for them. “We do not allow criminals to abuse our platform or avoid justice,” he said.