Topic: Telegram will now hand over information to authorities (Read 378 times)

But what is certain is that after Telegram submitted information to the authorities, it has indirectly sparked a debate about the future of protecting freedom or the right to speak on the internet. With the latest policy changes like this, there are many concerns among Telegram users, indeed for now it is still safe for all of us but for those who are political dissidents it will not be safe.

So remember the dilemma of freedom and security in social activities. The higher the security, the lower the freedom, and vice versa. The funny thing is, many people want both. Many people support freedom of speech. But when faced with security issues, shouting will harm others.

But what is certain is that the problem faced by Telegram if you look deeper is apart from privacy that cannot be controlled by this country because of the WEB3 "TON" Project owned by Telegram/Durov. The case is the same as Mr. Zuck with the Libra crypto project which was shut down by the US Government.

Wont be surprised if there would really be some other platforms that would emerged on which it would really be replacing up Telegram into its current position now. Somehow it will really be that hard
on replacing on something that had been trusted out by many for years. We cant be able to deny on how big Telegram now when it comes to reputation and popularity of this messaging app on which same goes with Discord too. Just like the rest been saying that issues could arise up instantly whenever there would really be those sudden issues or problems that had been thrown and later on they do become a centralized platform
on which you will really be needing up to verify or comply or they could be able to trace up a certain user on which it do really sucks on this case. As i have said above that sooner or later if things turns out to be that
choking or something which is really that too much, then people will really be finding out another place on which they could really be able to hang on and make use without any issues or compromising their
privacy or anonymity on which we know that this is really that something important here on this space. Whenever there would really be changes then this is where people would be starting on having doubts
on using up such services or whatever it would be. People will really be that commonsensely be dealing up with things that they do prefer and wanted.

Well fuck this then.  I rarely use Telegram anyhow.  I guess in the past I've used them to mainly chat with other forum members (either via text or voice calls) as well as for group "chats" and mainly in which involved NFTs.  There's a few NFT sales groups that are ran straight off of Telegram.  At the time this was the best way to do so.  There's a lot of different bitcoin groups on there I know.

This is a big reminder to use Signal.  Signal is hands down the most secure messaging platform out there.

I don't think he had any choice but to obey the guidelines of the governments due to his arrest. But honestly Telegram was becoming a scammer's playground. It's being extensively used by the hackers and digital scammers since it's inception. At least those things will stop going forward. But you never know how the data is going to be used in the hands of the governments.

Privacy is necessary but looting the innocents can't continue for the sake of the privacy. It should have stopped at some point of time.

In my opinion, all applications that tell too much about their advantages will all end up like this because they are depressed. I remember when we assumed that the WhatsApp application was the safest and most comfortable to use but in the end they were also the same, then many switched to using Telegram almost all of them.

After yesterday's incident, Telegram inevitably has to follow their policy and can no longer maintain it for users even though the language will later be rationalized again the initial policy or even as the title of the post above Telegram will now hand over the information to the authorities.

Yes. Of course, a new application will be born again after this story is finished.

Anonymity has got an essence for which some business are been run but most scammers sadly have taken advantage of the anonymous advantage the telegram platform comes with so as to rip unsuspecting users and then it's good if this can finally be put in check by telegram, fact remains that if the intention isn't to scam people then the anonymous business shouldn't be scared of revealing their identity at some point when it becomes essentially important especially when there were some financial transactions that needed clarifications.

This shouldn't mean total elimination of anonymity on the platform as that could sound like a bridge of contract because for some reason omw business have chosen the platform for the anonymity they provide to enable them carry out certain business , so when that benefits is bridge, definitely leaving becomes their next line of action.

This is the consequences of some implementation they do and people lose their freedom to be anonymous online. Government don't want this to happen since it make them hard to track the activity of individuals if they let this kind of freedom to happen.

They implement KYC and anything that can filter the identity of online user so what we can do is to be good and always do legal transaction online. For sure those people who always came out clean will not encounter any issue with this matter. But those who always think about taking advantage on other people for personal gains maybe they will have huge problems with the actions made by government.

Freedom is just only a word now since government always want to be in control on any situation.

It was always obvious there was going to be a compromise in some way between the government and telegram. They would not let him off the hook that easily now that they've got him because it's something they've been looking for a very long time.
I know Telegram collects IP addresses because it keeps track of banned accounts. I've seen cases where a banned account cannot open open another account on that phone even with a different number, but now giving those to the authorities is a different level.


In a perfect world, this would have been a good thing. When I mean a perfect world I mean a world where the authorities would abuse their power, but we do not live in an ideal world. As much as this can be used to track and limit criminals, the government can use it to track and make life difficult for those who they perceive as their enemies, even though they have not done anything wrong. These days simply opposing the policies of the governments makes you an enemy.

Reading the post telegram made, it seems the authorities need to provide valid reasons as to why the details of that user should be released to them. If they cant provide enough details, I believe telegram has a right to refuse them.

Telegram isn't even a privacy oriented messages, it's just their claim to be privacy oriented messages. Because when you want to create a new account, they ask you to submit phone number and you need to verify it, well asking phone number means they didn't really focus with privacy.

So, I don't surprised to see Telegram will share all of their information to authorities.

The real privacy oriented messages are gossip or 0xchat, you only need private key to login into your account.

I can't find that article anymore, maybe I read it on X, but there is an article I just found that talks about the French president denying that he didn't invite Durov to France and that the French government had nothing to do with the arrest. But that's just what he said, no one knows what happened.

Many suspect the arrest was politically motivated because Durov no longer has Russian citizenship, he renounced his Russian citizenship in 2014 after falling out with the Kremlin. In addition, Telegram is also used quite a lot by the Russian and Ukrainian armies in the ongoing war between the two countries. There are many factors that suggest that this arrest is more political in nature, which is why the Russian government has harshly criticized this arrest.



https://cointelegraph.com/news/french-president-macron-denies-inviting-pavel-durov-france

Quote the words of Spiderman here.

Durov have no choice but to comply whatever is in favor of the government. I guess many haven't seen this coming and those that have been using his platform will have to stay away from it if they're up for anonymity. Although the most affected ones are the cons and not the innocent ones that just casually does business there.

On the otherhand, I hope that more scammers will be arrested because of that decision because it is a common knowledge that Telegram became a den of thieves.

I knew it will come to this in the end. The centralization they’re after is now what they’ve gotten. I think the government has a thing with this crypto so much that anywhere it will thrive, they’ll tend to find a way to see how they can control users engagement there. This again has broken the rules guiding anonymity and decentralization in the crypto space. I can’t and was never too confident with telegram to use for any crypto savings or projects. Now that they’ve gotten the access, let’s see how they rip people off their privacy henceforth.

That arrest did the damage, and wouldnt be surprised if he traded these changes for his freedom... at least they did throw an update on these changes and not some  ingonito implementation.

Looks like privacy is being cornered everyday and sooner or later it will be history...no more pseudo names and all that great stuff that allows us to be anybody we want to be when we get online...

Just as expected on which these kind of scenarios is really just that not surprising or shocking anymore on which government would really be always targeting out the owner/CEO of such platforms on which
they do seem that really that having that anonymity and other correlated aspects or simply talking into those things that they cant be able to monitor or control on. Government would really be
trying out to make some issues as if they were really that truly legit but since there are some lawsuits and other issues been raised up then as an owner then there's no way that you could be able to
argue into those things that files against you. Now that we are already into such condition then government will really be that making this as an opportunity to make things to be traceable.
Their last step? Of course they will really be making things to be regulated and centralized on which we've seen above that IP addresses and whatever information that could be extract with
will really be used on monitoring. Detecting or catching out some scams is really just that an alibi.

The government will actually do everything to try to control anything they believe they can get in control and telegram, isn't an exception for this and despite rate of criminal/fraudulent activities going with telegram, this will now become a bad business for fraudsters as many of them wouldn't want their ip and identity to get disclosed to any security agencies. Nevertheless, will open business for other developers to of developing such an app like telegram.

The criminal activity taking place in Telegram is just an excuse, what governments really want is to monitor everything that anyone using that platform is doing, and that is basically what they got thanks to this change on the terms of Telegram, however as long as those platforms are centralized then we should have seen this coming long ago, and anyone that is interested on keeping their privacy should do well to think on the alternatives they can use to accomplish this goal.

Governments are good at cutting off the heads of centralized platforms like Telegram, but completely peer-to-peer alternatives like SimpleX and Nostr seem to keep holding their own.

I rarely use Telegram, but I'm aware that millions of people do. That said, it's just another honeypot in the collection. You can expect every message you send to be accessible to authorities, so it's better to uninstall it altogether.

A lot of criminals use Telegram and i can say that a large percent of crypto scams happen in Telegram, that is not to say that i support that people's phone numbers and ip addresses should be revealed to LE, but that it was always coming. There are a lot of people using the app genuinely, but they now have to be under this policy were their details can be exposed to the authorities.

The government claim they are after people who do illicit business, but as they try to take them out, they take everyone's privacy along with it, crazy.

We are going in a very wrong direction. At first, we had no-kyc services, but they got banned. Then Bitcoin mixers got banned, now privacy-focused messaging app gets banned. What's next? Decentralization is a great escape for us. We need a platform where people will be able to send encrypted messages but there will be no central power capable of revealing any information. Imagine, if Bitcoin wasn't decentralized, they would set censorship on Bitcoin transactions.

Are there guarantees? Are you sure that Telegram won't reveal absolutely every info about you? I think that giving away information if the government requests, is a mascarade. You never know when they give away your info and when not. For your safety, it's better to assume that you are monitored without official request from government

I’m totally against what happened to the Telegram CEO and I don’t like what Telegram is now doing. However, Telegram was the biggest scammer communication network ever built by mankind. I’ve made my life so much easier by just never using it. In that sense, I am happy that some of these scammers will now find themselves in some hot water.

Oh yeah, because it's about telegram search. Nope, it's about privacy of conversation. I couldn't care less about the search function.
What I care about is that when I talk to someone that isn't being read by someone else to make sure we both are safe and aren't talking about anything illegal.


To ensure our safety they're letting the government agencies know that they can wrap their protective cloak around us to make us warm and cozy. Time to stop using telegram, I guess.

Telegram is not a decentralized system, but the platform was able to centrally protect users' data from the government. It was not perfect, but it made government access to information difficult, which was good. Now, with a simple police report or request from the courts, users' information can be submitted to the government.

Criminals will always take advantage of any opportunity to carry out their nefarious actions. Even Bitcoin's decentralized nature has also been misused. Submitting the details of suspected criminals to the government is not a bad idea, but the government might use this new policy as an excuse to engage in a political witch-hunt, surveillance and invasion of privacy.

Durovs life probably depends on this decision and giving in is understandable after the arrest. It's no wonder anymore that big personalities like Elon are not untouchable. They can do this to anyone.

But it's also going to deter the predator on the platform. There are many pedos and scammers in the chats, I receive their PMs all the time having fake profile pictures with them telling me to invest and make money.  The telegram chat though is still useful for communication.

In a similar thread here, I gave the same response which I don't think has changed. I don't care. The only people who would care about the release of their information to the government by Telegram are those who use the platform to perpetrate all types of scams and those who are thriving in it. Aside that I am sure those who are on the platform because of airdrop hunting don't care. One thing is for sure though and that it any other platform that may have the clause that they will share users information with third party and you know what because we don't read their privacy document we wouldn't know.

The number of users in Telegram will reduce with this development because that app seems to have had more scammers than legit individuals with genuine intentions. Telegram would not just give out your private information if it is not requested legally by a security agency or the government, so if you have no bad intentions and are not a scammer or cybercriminal, the Telegram app is still considered very safe for your use, although no longer private.

It isn't surprising to me, I already know the arrest wasn't ordinary and he'll not pull through this without dancing to their tunes, it's obvious we lost one fight against freedom of speech and expression. Very soon, they might even implement controlled content like other social media platforms. It could only take time until they're fully subjective to the demands of the authorities.

I am not also surprised totally since it's a centralized scheme and total anonymity can never be obtained from centralization. Could we turn our faces to decentralized social media platforms like Diamond app and co which is not controlled by a single company or entity? I think proper decentralization of social media would fix this problem.

People who do not study history are doomed to repeat it:
https://www.newsweek.com/volkswagen-executive-arrested-conspiracy-charges-over-emissions-scandal-540292

Does not matter why you are there or what country it is. If there is an arrest warrant for you someplace, don't go there if you don't want to get arrested.

Period. Full stop. End of line.

Ignoring the privacy things and everything else. This was a PR stunt by that backfired on him. 'Look I am going here and they won't do anything to me because I am right and they are wrong'

Nope.....

-Dave

Can you tell the news article particularly, i didn't read the same like that. It was just mentioned the travel was personal and not business related.

He was released in bail but still in France and under surveillance. Probably this new guidelines from TG is one of the requests or ruling to the CEO, maybe for him to get released.

While there are many suspicions that Durov's arrest might have political motives, due to his Russian nationality but the France President tells otherwise. But who knows...

Techs with a central body like a CEO can't be tagged as decentralized, less they is nobody who controls the affairs of the system. However, the anonymity of telegram was misused for illicit purposes beyond scams, from the allegations on him that led to this change of terms, telegram was used for drug trafficking, and distribution of child sexual abuse images. While it's not questionable whether it's true or not, any platform with a strong privacy like telegram had will most likely be a cove for bad actors.

As for scam, he fought it using the notoscam bot that enables members to report scammers and a red tag "scam" will be added to the scammer's account.  

It is the eternal dilemma between freedom and security. Normally what gives us freedom and privacy also gives it to criminals, and those who defend a large state with great powers to control more and more do so arguing that this will better control criminals and that if you are an honest citizen you don't have to worry.

For example cash gives you more freedom and privacy than CBDCs, just as they give it to criminals.

In this case, I imagine that some alternative to Telegram could come out? In the same way that the state never tires of increasing its control mechanisms, the inventiveness of citizens to avoid them does not stop.

I have got to understand that when the government arrest these C.E.Os that champion the anonymity cause, they suddenly loosen up and agree to become regulated or monitored.

I like the fact also that this happened because the cases of telegram scams has been increasing lately and also is the case of unknowingly granting permission to an imbedded malware to hack into an unsuspecting victims device after just a click on a link.

According to the news I read before, it was the French president who invited him to France and this is more like a trap than him going there with an attitude of underestimating French authority. His arrest in France appears to be politically motivated rather than related to any criminal offence as the French government has claimed. So I think it's almost impossible for him to escape because they will do everything they can to catch him. That is also the reason why Russia continuously asked France to release him even though he no longer has Russian citizenship.

What I am thinking is that after he agrees to cooperate and comply with the requests of the French authorities, will he be released or will he continue to be banned from leaving France?

He had many choices actually, before the arrest, he knows already that he is wanted in France but he still undisturbed and go there underestimating France authority, that's why he was arrested just when he landed on the airport. And, now, yes, he never had any choices but to follow X country/authority rules, especially for illegal doings on the tg platform.

I knew it would all end this way and that was he was arrested just to reveal the backend keys to them. Although it's good thing but it's not secure as you said. Anything else? Well I think this is another push for new app to be launched which might likely take the telegram space since it's real purpose has been defeated as a number 1 anonymity app for businesses. Current there is a threat for large business such as huge communities which solely rely on telegram to disseminate information. Without this I don't think there would be a way for his easy release and I believe since everything has changed it wouldn't take time for his outcoming.

Certainly, these changes in information security will have a huge impact on the users.  I believe those who don't want their information be submitted to the authority will avoid using telegram.

Many had been using telegram for fraud and scam purposes, I have seen a lot an been a victim of the scheme where they invited people to do certain tasks in reward for cyptocurrency but get unpaid in the end.


It is to be expected, people who wanted to profit from their creation will automatically resort to centralized system.  Only a few individual have passion to share their technology without profit for user's convinience.

I woke up this morning and saw this on his official Telegram channel since I'm a subscriber. The same thing you said above was what came out of my mind.
 
A lot of us already know that it will get to this stage since his detention and release from the French custody, and yet he was prohibited from leaving the country. It was certain that they were already cooking something that they wanted to force him to do.
 
For those who see Telegram as one of their secured places for business due to the anonymity features, I think it's time for them to start looking for alternative options because this handing over of users phone number and IP location won't only be done to those who violate their policies, as he said, but it can be handed over to whomever authorities request  it. Anonymity was never guaranteed under a centralised platform. 

Technology is still too centralized. We will never have our freedom until it is decentralized enough.

Telegram CEO never made any choices because he never had any choices.

Effectively fighting scams should not require you to lose your freedom and anonymity.

After the arrest, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov updated the app's security and privacy policies,  the IP addresses and phone numbers of those who violate rules can be disclosed to authorities in valid legal requests. A significant change considering that Telegram was considered one of the applications with a somewhat higher level of anonymity.
They claim it was their decision, but apparently, the arrest pushed the matter.

It may be a good thing in detecting scams, but it will significantly affect all businesses that rely on anonymity on Telegram.

Durov's (CEO of Telegram) article regarding the Telegram Terms of Service and Privacy Policy: https://t.me/durov/345