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/345Over the last few weeks, a dedicated team of moderators, leveraging AI, has made Telegram Search much safer. All the problematic content we identified in Search is no longer accessible. If you still manage to find something unsafe or illegal in Telegram Search, please report it to us via @SearchReport.
To further deter criminals from abusing Telegram Search, we have updated our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, ensuring they are consistent across the world. We’ve made it clear that the IP addresses and phone numbers of those who violate our rules can be disclosed to relevant authorities in response to valid legal requests.
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.