Telegram, the privacy-focused messaging app, has said it will share users’ IP addresses and phone numbers with authorities if they have search warrants or other ‘valid legal requests’.

In a post to the app on Monday, Telegram’s CEO Pavel Durov said that the social platform’s terms of service had been changed to update its privacy policy.

Originally, in a section detailing the app’s cooperation with law enforcement, the policy stated that only if a court order confirmed a user was a terror suspect, it might disclose an IP address and phone number to authorities. The original fine print goes on to say ‘So far, this has never happened’. 

The policy now states: “If Telegram receives a valid order from the relevant judicial authorities that confirms you’re a suspect in a case involving criminal activities…we will perform a legal analysis of the request and may disclose your IP address and phone number to the relevant authorities.”

In his post, Durov claimed that the update “should discourage criminals,” but the move represents a notable shift for the app, which has so far prided itself on its ability to keep users fairly anonymous, even from governments and law enforcement.

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

The turnaround follows the arrest of the Russian-born founder in Paris last month, reportedly due to a lack of moderation on his company’s platform, with French officials saying the app failed to co-operate with law enforcement efforts to combat drug smuggling, child sexual abuse material, and fraud.

The app had already been temporarily shut down in Russia in 2018 after Durov refused to share personal data with the government, in an effort to protect user privacy, and has been used by protestors in both Belarus and Iran in recent years to organise against crushing regimes. 

Since then, though, the app has also become a bastion of far-right content, hate-speech, and disinformation, with the app becoming a crucial means of communication and organising between extremist groups.

In the UK, that culminated in the prolific use of Telegram by far-right rioters during the recent period of unrest in England.

Following his arrest Durov promised changes to the app’s moderation in an effort to clean up both Telegram’s content and public image. According to the billionaire, over the “last few weeks,” moderators have been using AI tools to comb through posts, finding and blocking illegal and harmful content that could be accessed through the app’s search feature.

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Looking to reassure both legitimate users and the authorities that the company is moving to purge this criminal element, Durov said: “Search on Telegram is more powerful than in other messaging apps because it allows users to find public channels and bots. Unfortunately, this feature has been abused by people who violated our Terms of Service to sell illegal goods.

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