Telegram will now share users’ phone numbers and IP addresses with law enforcement if they are found to be violating the platform’s rules following a valid legal request.
According to a newly updated privacy policy announced by CEO Pavel Durov on Monday, Telegram will comply with such requests only after receiving a valid court order confirming that the user is a suspect in a criminal case that breaches the platform’s Terms of Service.
Previously, Telegram’s policy limited sensitive user information sharing to cases involving terror suspects.
“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,” Durov said today.
I thought Telegram already shared data with (German and other) authorities on multiple occasions…
They probably get around by arguing a “user message” is not the same as user data
It’s terrible. I posted something regarding this on Mastodon:
We’ve covered multiple stories on @sr where Telegram gave user data to governments, despite their site denying it ever happened. These new Telegram ‘changes’ are them being honest about their privacy for the first time.
Case from 2022:
Rant
For years I’ve been hearing people in the community and even some clients I work with spread misinformation about Signal, while turning a blind eye to obvious lies being spread by Telegram. Telegram is not the worst tool to use in the world, but I’m not sure how anyone can take any claim they make at face value when they’re completely dishonest about the privacy they realistically offer their users. It’d be better if they didn’t have a transparency report than to have one and lie. I guess we live in a world where people would rather blindly follow what someone says rather than look at the evidence for themselves. Ironically the people using Telegram under the belief that everything else is compromised are the biggest ‘sheeple’ in the room (quoting some Telegram users who gave me shit for using Signal 
)
Thanks for listening to my rant. Please think critically and get information from multiple sources!!
You know, some people still think Telegram is encrypted! (Yes, I know it has in-transit encryption, but I don’t consider this as encryption for a messenger)
“oh, but they have secret chats that are e2ee”
So, why is the far right still around then? They’re all on telegram.
For anyone paying attention, Telegram was never a reliably secure or private messaging app. Unfortunately for the many users, they weren’t paying attention.