A month after his arrest by French authorities, Pavel Durov is making it more difficult for bad actors to use the popular Telegram messaging service that he founded for nefarious activities.

The Telegram CEO announced this week that the company had updated its terms of service and privacy policy so that it will share with authorities the phone numbers and IP addresses of users who violate the app’s policies in response to “valid legal requests.”

Durov wrote on his personal Telegram channel that the company had removed what he called “problematic content,” with staff members using AI techniques to scour the platform for such content through its search capabilities. Telegram “won’t let bad actors jeopardize the integrity of our platform for almost a billion users,” he wrote.

The update to Telegram’s terms of service is significant. Before, the company said it would disclose information like phone numbers and IP addresses if it received a court order that indicated the targeted user was involved in terrorism.

The 39-year-old Russian wrote in his statement that while Telegram’s search capabilities were more powerful than those of other messaging apps, the feature “has been abused by people who violated our Terms of Service to sell illegal goods,” adding that “all the problematic content we identified in Search is no longer accessible.”

Users who come across anything illegal or unsafe in Telegram Search can report it through the “Search Report” feature on the app.

“Telegram Search is meant for finding friends and discovering news, not for promoting illegal goods,” Durov wrote. “These measures should discourage criminals.”

Fraud, Money Laundering, and Other Charges

Durov was arrested by French authorities August 24 and now faces a range of charges related to Telegram, including accusations that the app is being used by criminals for drug trafficking, distributing child pornography, fraud, money laundering, and other crimes. The allegations also include Durov and Telegram refusing law enforcement requests for information or documents connected with criminal activity on Telegram.

The charges have sparked a debate over freedom of speech and law enforcement’s efforts to shut down the growing criminal activity on Telegram and similar messaging services. In a statement after the arrest, Telegram said that it “abides by EU laws, including the Digital Services Act — its moderation is within industry standards and constantly improving.”

In a statement on X (formerly Twitter), French President Emmanuel Marcon wrote that the country “is deeply committed to freedom of expression and communication, to innovation, and to the spirit of entrepreneurship. It will remain so.”

The arrest was “part of an ongoing judicial investigation. It is in no way a political decision. It is up to the judges to rule on the matter,” Marcon wrote.

A Shady History

Telegram, which was founded in 2013, has long been used by cybercriminals and terrorist organizations to run their operations or claim responsibilities for incidents. Flare, a company that monitors cybercriminal communities, late last year wrote about the growing use of Telegram by bad actors, noting that they “routinely use Telegram to share leaked credentials, coordinate fraud schemes against retail and ecommerce businesses, and share consumer bank information. In some ways Telegram can be seen as another facet of Tor (the dark web) due to threat actors seamlessly switching between the two.”

The company wrote that the “rise of Telegram fraud and cybercrime is due in part to the ease of channel creation and user anonymity of the app. Compared to a traditional dark web site on Tor which may take days or weeks to set up, Telegram channel and group creation takes seconds.”

In 2022, the US Justice Department (DOJ) issued a 58-page report about the challenges raised by the growing use of such “digital assets” as Telegram. In an opening letter to President Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland wrote that such assets in the global financial system have “profound implications for investors, consumers, and businesses and increases the risk of crimes such as money laundering, ransomware, terrorist financing, fraud and theft, and sanctions evasion.”

Merrick added that “strong international law enforcement cooperation will be essential to best position the United States and its partners to detect, investigate, prosecute, and otherwise disrupt criminal activity related to digital assets, and to overcome the unique obstacles posed by the features of these technologies to law enforcement efforts to combat their misuse.”

Cybersecurity firm Kaspersky said in March that last year the company saw 22% year-over-year increase in the number of phishing and scam links on Telegram.