Newly released data from messaging app Telegram reveals a sharp rise in the number of data demands it fulfilled over the past year for users’ data from requesting law enforcement agencies.

The rise in fulfilled user requests comes months after French authorities arrested Telegram CEO Pavel Durov in August in part for the company’s longstanding refusal to provide user data in response to a child exploitation investigation. Soon after Durov’s arrest, Telegram appeared to relax its policy on how it handles abuse reports.

Telegram’s latest transparency data — requestable only with a Telegram account and limited to the region where the requesting user is located — shows the messaging app handed over phone numbers and IP addresses to U.S. authorities on 900 occasions during 2024, affecting 2,253 Telegram users.

That’s a spike in the number of fulfilled data requests compared to most of 2024, which saw Telegram respond to 14 requests for user data on a total of 108 users, according to a global crowdsourced map of requests produced by Meduza.

Telegram’s transparency figures for 2024 also show that the messaging app gave over phone numbers and IP addresses to Indian authorities on 14,641 occasions, affecting 23,535 users. For the United Kingdom, Telegram said it gave phone numbers and IP addresses to U.K. authorities a total of 142 times, affecting 293 users, up from single-digits under the previous reporting period.

TechCrunch’s Carly Page in the U.K. and Jagmeet Singh in India contributed reporting.

(via 404 Media)