Pavel Durov, writing on his Telegram channel, said they have updated their terms and conditions but will only respond to ‘valid legal requests
The messaging app Telegram has agreed to disclose users’ phone numbers and IP addresses to law enforcement agencies in response to “valid legal requests.”
CEO Pavel Durov—who was arrested last month in France and charged with offenses of complicity and refusing to cooperate—posted on his Telegram channel on Monday, saying the change to the terms of service “should discourage criminals.”
He said, “While 99.999 percent of Telegram users have nothing to do with crime, the 0.001 percent involved in illicit activities create a bad image for the entire platform, putting the interests of our almost billion users at risk.”
It is not clear if Durov made the concessions as a result of pressure from the French authorities, who detained him when he arrived at Le Bourget airport near Paris from Dubai on Aug. 26.
On Monday, French lawyer Maud Marian told The Epoch Times Durov could wait 10 years for his trial because, she said, the Paris prosecutor’s office was attempting to get “information” from him.
But Sadry Porlon, another Paris-based lawyer who specializes in information technology law, disagreed.
Porlon said: “Either this refusal to communicate [by Telegram] is not real and Mr. Durov and his Telegram teams responded, or did not know that this information was requested of them, or it is the other way round, and the decision will not be long in coming. But in no case will it take 10 years to be decided.”
Whether Telegram changing its terms of service is the first step toward charges being dropped against Durov remains to be seen.
On Sept. 6, Durov released a statement saying the charges against him were “misguided” and denying Telegram was an “anarchic paradise.”
Durov said, “No innovator will ever build new tools if they know they can be personally held responsible for potential abuse of those tools.”
But on Monday, in his message on his Telegram channel, his tone was markedly less confrontational and more conciliatory.
