Telegram Hands U.S. Authorities Data on Thousands of Users

Telegram, the popular social network and messaging application which has also become a hotbed for all sorts of serious criminal activity, provided U.S. authorities with data on more than 2,200 users last year, according to newly released data from Telegram.

The news shows a massive spike in the number of data requests fulfilled by Telegram after French authorities arrested Telegram CEO Pavel Durov in August, in part because of the company’s unwillingness to provide user data in a child abuse investigation. Between January 1 and September 30, 2024, Telegram fulfilled 14 requests “for IP addresses and/or phone numbers” from the United States, which affected a total of 108 users, according to Telegram’s Transparency Reports bot. But for the entire year of 2024, it fulfilled 900 requests from the U.S. affecting a total of 2,253 users, meaning that the number of fulfilled requests skyrocketed between October and December, according to the newly released data.

“Fulfilled requests from the United States of America for IP address and/or phone number: 900,” Telegram’s Transparency Reports bot said when prompted for the latest report by 404 Media. “Affected users: 2253,” it added.

Telegram is especially popular with hackers, scammers, violent criminals, child abusers, and others not necessarily because of its message security (messages on Telegram are not end-to-end encrypted by default, and in 404 Media’s experience criminals rarely use the feature). Instead, it is the app’s social network-like features that allow for massive channels and group chats where many hundreds or thousands of people can discover and communicate with one another easily, and the (until recently) correct perception that Telegram was unlikely to hand over user data to the authorities even when asked to do so.

A month after Durov’s arrest in August, Telegram updated its privacy policy to say that the company will provide user data, including IP addresses and phone numbers, to law enforcement agencies in response to valid legal orders. Up until then, the privacy policy only mentioned it would do so when concerning terror cases, and said that such a disclosure had never happened anyway.

In the wake of that arrest, multiple cybercriminals indicated they would leave the platform, and some made backup accounts on other services, such as Signal.

Even though the data technically covers the entire of 2024, the jump from a total of 108 affected users in October to 2253 as of now, indicates that the vast majority of fulfilled data requests were in the last quarter of 2024, showing a huge increase in the number of law enforcement requests that Telegram completed.

Previously, the Telegram bot said this latest data would be published in January. It now says the next round of data will be published in April.