Telegram has said it will in future give the authorities the internet addresses and phone numbers of its users, in response to “valid legal requests” such as search warrants.

The change to the messaging app’s terms of service and privacy policy “should discourage criminals”, its embattled founder and chief executive Pavel Durov said. 

Mr Durov made the announcement in a post on Monday, weeks after his arrest in France on charges of failing to act against criminals using his app.

“While 99.999 per cent of Telegram users have nothing to do with crime, the 0.001 per cent involved in illicit activities create a bad image for the entire platform, putting the interests of our almost billion users at risk,” he added.

“We won’t let bad actors jeopardise the integrity of our platform for almost a billion users,” Mr Durov said.

The elusive 39-year old billionaire – who holds Russian, French and United Arab Emirati passports – added that the messaging platform had removed its more “problematic content”.

Telegram’s search feature “has been abused by people who violated our terms of service to sell illegal goods”, he told the 13 million subscribers to his personal channel.

“Over the past few weeks,” staff had combed through Telegram using artificial intelligence to ensure “all the problematic content we identified in search is no longer accessible”, he said.

Popular in Russia

Created in 2013, Telegram has become wildly popular in Russia, Ukraine, and the Middle East, both for private communication and as a source of uncensored news.

Today it is widely used by Russian and Ukrainian war propagandists, and by both sides – especially the Russian army – for battlefield communications.

This week, Ukraine banned the app on state-issued devices to prevent Russian spying. The Ukrainian National Security and Defence Council (RNBO) said it imposed the ban to “minimise” threats such as Russia being able to intercept messages even after they have been deleted.

“Telegram is actively used by the enemy for cyber-attacks, the distribution of phishing and malicious software, user geolocation and missile strike correction,” the RNBO said in a statement.

There is speculation that Russia may have a backdoor to the app’s encrypted communications and that the West is now pressuring Mr Durov to provide the same favour.

The prospect of handing the authorities details of users’ identities will be a source of disquiet to dissidents in Iran (where Telegram is officially banned but widely used), and other repressive states.

Arrested in France

It is a significant reversal for the platform’s Russian-born co-founder, who was arrested on Aug 24 as he arrived at Le Bourget airport outside Paris by private jet.

Emmanuel Macron, the French president, was kept in the dark over his arrest, despite being reportedly close to Mr Durov, who secured fast-track French nationality in 2021.

French prosecutors charged Mr Durov with enabling criminal activity on the platform. Allegations against him include complicity in spreading child abuse images and trafficking of drugs. He was also charged with failing to comply with law enforcement.

Mr Durov, who has denied the charges, initially lashed out, saying that holding him responsible for crimes committed by third parties on the platform was both “surprising” and “misguided”.

But he later announced steps appearing to bow to Paris’s demands.

On Sept 6, he said Telegram would alter its “people nearby” feature to present users with “legitimate businesses” rather than “bots and scammers”.

“This year we are committed to turn moderation on Telegram from an area of criticism into one of praise,” he said at the time.

He was released on a €5 million (£4.2 million) bail but must remain in France and report to police twice a week.

Misinformation

Critics say Telegram has become a hotbed of misinformation, child pornography, and terror-related content partly because of a feature that allows groups to have up to 200,000 members.

Meta-owned WhatsApp, by contrast, limits the size of groups to 1,000.

Telegram was under fire last month for hosting far-Right channels that helped provoke riots in English cities this summer.

Mr Durov, who rarely speaks in public, has a fortune estimated at $15.5 billion (£11.6 billion) by Forbes magazine, but touts the virtues of an ascetic life that includes ice baths and not drinking alcohol or coffee.

He came to prominence in Russia by founding Vkontakte, a social network modelled on Facebook. 

He lost control of that company after refusing to hand over data on Ukrainian protesters to the Kremlin and left Russia in 2014, saying he would never return. He headed to France and went on to find wealth with Telegram, founded with his brother Nikolai in 2013.

According to Mr Durov, Telegram has around 900 million active users worldwide.