After years of neglecting requests to join child protection initiatives, the controversial messaging platform Telegram has decided to collaborate with a globally recognized organization to combat the proliferation of child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) is utilized by leading online services to assist in identifying and eliminating CSAM and curb its distribution.
Telegram had consistently declined to engage with the IWF or any similar programs.
However, following the arrest of its founder Pavel Durov in Paris for Telegram’s alleged inadequacies in moderating extreme content, the platform has reversed its stance.
The IWF has characterized Telegram’s choice as “transformational” but cautioned that it marks just the initial phase of a “much longer journey” for the application.
“By becoming a member of the IWF, Telegram can start implementing our industry-leading tools to ensure that this material is not shareable on the platform,” said Derek Ray-Hill, Interim CEO of the IWF.
‘Dark web in your pocket’
Telegram boasts around 950 million users globally and has previously promoted itself as an app centered on user privacy, in contrast to the policy standards prioritized by other major social media firms.
However, reporting from the BBC and various news outlets has revealed that criminals utilize the app to promote drugs and offer services related to cybercrime and fraud, along with more recently, CSAM.
This situation prompted one expert to liken it to “the dark web in your pocket.”
In August, its billionaire owner was detained at an airport north of Paris.
Mr. Durov faces allegations of failing to cooperate with law enforcement regarding issues such as drug trafficking, child sexual content, and fraud.
French judges have prohibited the 40-year-old from leaving France while further investigations continue.
The company asserts that his arrest is unjust, claiming he should not be held accountable for the actions of users on the platform.
Nevertheless, Telegram has since announced a series of operational changes, which include:
Stating that the IP addresses and phone numbers of users who violate its policies will be provided to law enforcement in response to valid legal requests.
Disabling features like “people nearby,” which it acknowledged had issues with bots and scammers.
Regularly publishing transparency reports detailing the quantity of content removed—something it had previously refrained from doing.
Mr. Durov has also expressed his intention to “transform moderation on Telegram from an area of criticism into one of praise.”
The collaboration with the IWF seems to be the latest stride in that direction.
The IWF is among the few organizations worldwide that possess the legal authority to actively search for child sexual content for its removal.
Its continuously updated list of known abusive content serves as a tool for websites to identify and block matches to prevent its distribution.
Telegram claims that even before joining the IWF, it was successfully removing hundreds of thousands of abuse materials each month through its internal systems. The IWF membership will enhance its existing processes, the company stated.
The app is marketed as a fully end-to-end encrypted messaging service, which implies that only the sender and recipient can read the messages—similar to WhatsApp and Signal.
However, in reality, most communications occur with standard encryption, raising concerns about the extent to which it is secure from hacking and interception.
Mr. Durov, who hails from Russia and currently resides in Dubai, holds citizenship in Russia, France, the United Arab Emirates, and the Caribbean island country of St. Kitts and Nevis.
Telegram enjoys significant popularity in Russia, Ukraine, and other former Soviet states, as well as in Iran.
Who is Pavel Durov and what is Telegram?
Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of Telegram, is currently under formal investigation in France as part of a probe into organized crime associated with the messaging app.
Prosecutors in Paris stated that the 39-year-old billionaire is not in custody but is under judicial monitoring and must pay a deposit of €5 million (£4.2 million; $5.6 million).
Mr. Durov, who is also a French citizen, is required to report to a French police station twice per week and is prohibited from leaving France.
The actions taken by the prosecutors in France represent the latest development in an ongoing narrative that has generated considerable astonishment in the tech world.
It is unprecedented for the owner of a social media or messaging service to be arrested due to how that platform is being utilized, which has sparked discussions about freedom of speech, accountability, and the responsibilities of social media and messaging company executives in the matter.
Mr. Durov’s lawyer, David-Olivier Kaminski, claimed that Telegram adhered to all European digital regulations and maintained moderation standards comparable to other social networks.
He remarked that it was “absurd” to imply that his client could be implicated “in criminal acts that don’t concern him either directly or indirectly.”
Mr. Durov is a billionaire originally from Russia.
He established the well-known Russian social media platform VKontakte.
In 2014, Mr. Durov departed Russia after he declined to adhere to government requests to eliminate opposition communities on the site.
A year prior, he launched Telegram and currently manages the company from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where he now resides.
He possesses citizenship in the UAE and France, but Russia continues to regard him as its citizen.
After his arrest, Telegram stated that Mr. Durov frequently traveled across Europe.
In an April interview with conservative US media figure Tucker Carlson, Mr. Durov mentioned that he would reject specific requests from authorities to take down content from his platform.
He remarked, “Where we believed it would cross the line—it wouldn’t align with our values of freedom of speech and the protection of people’s private communications—we would disregard.”
What is Telegram?
Telegram ranks among the largest social media and messaging platforms globally, alongside Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, and WeChat.
In July, Mr. Durov asserted that Telegram had reached 950 million monthly active users. It enjoys popularity in Russia and Ukraine, and pro-democracy movements in Iran and Hong Kong also utilize it.
Telegram provides end-to-end encryption, which ensures that messages can only be accessed on the sending and receiving devices, though this is not the default configuration for users.
The significant distinction between Telegram and comparable services like WhatsApp is the capacity of groups on Telegram.
WhatsApp restricts group sizes to 1,000 users, while on Telegram, groups can have up to 200,000 members.
The platform has faced criticism for the potential spread of disinformation in these large groups.
Critics have contended that the platform has facilitated the dissemination of conspiracy theories, neo-Nazi content, pedophilic material, or terror-related information.
In the UK, the app was scrutinized for harboring far-right channels that played a role in organizing recent violent disturbances in English cities, and cybersecurity experts have noted that its moderation of extremist and illegal content falls short compared to other social media platforms and messaging applications.
Following Mr. Durov’s arrest, Telegram claimed its moderation practices “are in line with industry standards and are continually improving.”
It asserted that it complies with European Union regulations, including the Digital Services Act, which aims to promote a secure and accountable online environment.
“Nearly a billion users worldwide rely on Telegram for communication and for vital information,” stated the app’s comments.
“We are looking forward to a swift resolution of this situation. Telegram stands with you all.”
Historical opposition
For instance, in 2019, BBC investigators uncovered evidence that pedophiles utilized both Telegram and Discord to share access to child abuse material.
Other technology companies, such as Google’s YouTube, have made significant investments in combating child abuse materials and will remove them when they become aware of their presence.
Tools from the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) are employed by major platforms to assist in identifying and removing Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) and preventing its distribution.
To be fair, Telegram has previously asserted that reported child abuse images are typically processed within an hour. Discord has also claimed it actively seeks to safeguard its users and encourages them to only communicate with or accept invitations from people they already know.
However, Telegram’s founder and CEO Pavel Durov has long been hesitant to participate in official initiatives, citing the platform’s strict privacy policies regarding the sharing of sensitive data with governmental bodies. He has vehemently opposed efforts by various governments to weaken end-to-end encryption or provide access to users’ messages.
For example, Telegram declined to meet the demands of Russia’s FSB Federal Security Service, which sought access to certain messages.
Child abuse crackdown
Yet, the IWF has noted that Telegram has agreed to collaborate with the internationally recognized organization to curb the dissemination of child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
“For the first time, the social media platform, which boasts over 950 million monthly active users, will utilize tools and data from the UK’s Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) alongside its own to detect, disrupt, remove, and block child sexual abuse imagery,” it announced.
“Today (December 4), the IWF revealed that it has granted Telegram membership in an agreement that will enable it to access the IWF’s leading datasets and trusted technology to help combat child sexual abuse imagery on the platform,” it further stated.
“This marks a transformative first step in a longer journey,” said Derek Ray-Hill, Interim CEO of the IWF. “Child sexual abuse imagery is a horror that plagues our world wherever it occurs.”
“Now, by collaborating with the IWF, Telegram can begin deploying our leading tools to ensure that this material cannot be shared on the service,” Ray-Hill stated. “This is a significant moment, and we will work diligently with Telegram to make sure of that.”
The IWF has previously stated it had confirmed thousands of reports of child se*ual abuse imagery on Telegram since 2022 – including category A imagery (the most severe kinds of child se*ual abuse), and imagery involving children younger than two years old.
When the IWF reported this content to Telegram, it was removed by the platform.
Telegram will now apparently use a range of IWF services, including taking IWF “hashes”, unique digital fingerprints of millions of known child sexual abuse images and videos, to instantly spot when this criminal content is being shared in public parts of the site.
These will then be blocked and prevented. As well as this, the IWF will report directly into Telegram when child se*ual abuse imagery is detected and work with them to remove it swiftly. The IWF will work closely with Telegram to ensure its services are being used effectively.
They will also deploy tools to block “non-photographic” depictions of child sexual abuse, including known AI child se*ual abuse imagery, as well as tools which will block links to webpages known to be harbouring child sexual abuse material.
The IWF will also look to offer bespoke solutions to specific abuses of the site, including helping identify and stop accounts being used for distributing and profiting from commercialised child se*ual abuse material.
“Telegram removes hundreds of thousands of child abuse materials each month, relying on reports and proactive moderation which includes AI, machine learning and hash-matching,” said Remi Vaughn, head of press and media relations at Telegram.
“The IWF’s datasets and tools will strengthen the mechanisms Telegram has in place to protect its public platform – and further ensure that Telegram can continue to effectively delete child abuse materials before they can reach any users,” said Vaughn.
Pavel Durov arrest
The change comes after Pavel Durov, the Russian-born billionaire founder and owner of Telegram, is currently in France after he was arrested in August amid a police investigation into him allegedly allowing a wide range of crimes on the platform due to a lack of content moderators, coupled with a lack of co-operation with police.
Prosecutors at the time claimed the platform has failed to take action against harmful and criminal content on the site, including child se*ual abuse imagery.
French judges have barred the 40-year-old from leaving France pending further investigations, and Durov remains on bail.
The company maintains that his arrest is unfair, and that he should not be held liable for what users do on the platform.
Policy changes
But since his arrest there has been changes. In September Telegram made a notable policy change to its long-standing refusal to co-operate with law enforcement about users or data on its platform.
Telegram said it will hand over the IP addresses and phone numbers of users who violate its rules to authorities – but only with “valid legal requests.”
And Durov has also vowed to “turn moderation on Telegram from an area of criticism into one of praise”.
The partnership with the IWF appears to be the latest step in that process.
Dubai-based Telegram is widely used in Russia and countries across the former Soviet Union and Middle East. It is said to be the most popular instant messaging application in parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa.
In September Ukraine banned the platform on state-owned devices, due to national security concerns amid Russia’s illegal invasion of that country.
In general, if we simplify things, all conversations and messages are encrypted to some extent, escalating to end-to-end encryption for calls or Secret Chats between two individuals, which effectively blocks interception in those scenarios — even by Telegram itself. Furthermore, you can set messages, photos, videos, and other files sent in Secret Chats to “self-destruct” a specified time after they’ve been viewed.
Conversations in groups (i.e., involving three or more participants) do not include end-to-end encryption or self-destruction features, yet they remain a significant appeal of the app.
Finally, it’s important to note that although Telegram is occasionally referred to as open-source, this designation solely pertains to the client software. On the server front, Telegram utilizes a proprietary protocol known as MTProto for message encryption. Generally, security experts favor standardized encryption libraries where all potential vulnerabilities are recognized and addressed.
Are Telegram Channels secure?
Users routinely create permanent groups and Channels, which can transmit messages to countless individuals. Both groups and Channels face some specific safety challenges. They may be leveraged to distribute scams, adult content, and misinformation, and have been associated with instigating violence or even genocide in regions like India, Pakistan, and Myanmar.
Telegram does implement rules and algorithms to protect against such issues, including the promotion of any type of violence, yet it seems unable to enforce these policies reliably. Ultimately, the responsibility falls on users to be wary of others and the messages they disseminate, as well as to report any concerning content.
Due to these factors, it may be wise to guide children toward safer platforms. If that’s not feasible, you can still navigate to Settings > Privacy and Security in the app and activate settings like group controls and Restricted Mode, the latter of which filters content such as explicit material and violence.
A feature you might want to keep disabled is People Nearby. This function allows you to see other Telegram users in your vicinity, but it has previously been shown that a hacker could misuse this feature to pinpoint someone’s exact location. You can ensure your location remains hidden by heading to Contacts > Find People Nearby and selecting Stop Showing Me.
Does Telegram gather data?
Indeed. The company must retain certain data such as your username, device information, usage patterns, and connecting IP address. If applicable, it also logs other Telegram applications you’ve utilized and your history of changes to your username. This metadata is kept for a maximum of 12 months, but it isn’t used for advertising or other commercial motives.
Keep in mind that law enforcement and intelligence organizations could potentially request Telegram to provide server-side data, or could directly target individuals by confiscating their devices or executing phishing and surveillance techniques. These scenarios are applicable to any online service, yet there have been real incidents involving Iranian dissidents.
Is Telegram safer than WhatsApp?
While Telegram is recognized as a messaging service emphasizing security and privacy, it isn’t necessarily superior to WhatsApp in every aspect. For instance, only Telegram’s Secret Chats offer end-to-end encryption. Conversely, WhatsApp provides end-to-end encryption for all messages. Telegram also collects more data, but the advantage is that it doesn’t utilize this data for commercial purposes, unlike WhatsApp.
However, Telegram does allow users to conceal their number, a functionality that WhatsApp lacks. WhatsApp also imposes time restrictions on message deletions, while Telegram offers greater flexibility in this regard. Additionally, Telegram gives you more control over how messages automatically disappear, compared to WhatsApp, which has predefined timers of one day, seven days, or 90 days.
In summary, Telegram can be safer than WhatsApp if you’re knowledgeable about how to protect yourself. Users who prefer a straightforward application without much customization will likely find WhatsApp to be the safer option due to its end-to-end encryption on all conversations.
