“To this day, we have disclosed 0 bytes of user data to third parties, including governments.”
Messaging apps that offer end-to-end encryption can claim that they’re protecting their users by saying that they’ve thrown away the key — metaphorical and literal — and can’t undo what’s been scrambled in transmission. Telegram, however, claims it protects every user whether they use E2EE or not, saying that government data requests have to pass an especially high muster before they would comply and that they have never acceded to such request. Not so, a report claims.
Der Spiegel reports from sources that Telegram has fulfilled a number data requests from Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office involving terror and child abuse suspects. Still more data requests for other criminal cases have been more or less ignored.
To date, Telegram has maintained in the FAQ section of its website that it has transferred “0 bytes of user data” to any third party, including governments. In section 8.3 of its privacy policy, last updated in 2018, the company says it will release users’ IP addresses and phone numbers to authorities when presented with a warrant on terrorism-related charges. However, despite promising to release semiannual reports on any disclosure activities, it has never actually done so.
The German government has been pressuring Dubai-based Telegram to cooperate with its investigations into right-wing extremist groups who have been using the messaging platform to spread their cause and coordinate action. Telegram has ramped up its own enforcement actions recently, but its user and group bans have been as comprehensive as lawmakers have been looking for.
In a similar vein, Russia purged the company’s app in 2018 from the country for refusing to surrender its encryption keys under federal anti-terrorism laws. Telegram reached an agreement with the Kremlin in 2020 that would see the app return to Russia with increased enforcement across the platform.
It’s a good sign that Telegram continues to provide Russian users with an uncensored window into the military’s invasion of Ukraine despite of a greater domestic crackdown on anti-patriotic sentiment. But all of this leaves questions unanswered about how much user data the company has given to governments.
We’ve reached out to Telegram for comment.
