Kevin Collier is a reporter covering cybersecurity, privacy and technology policy for NBC News.
Before Telegram’s CEO was arrested in France, the app had gained a reputation for ignoring advocacy groups fighting child exploitation. Three of those groups, the U.S.-based National Center for Missing & Exploited Children , the Canadian Centre for Child Protection and the U.K.-based Internet Watch Foundation, all told NBC News that their outreach to Telegram about child sexual abuse material, often shorthanded as CSAM, on the platform has largely been ignored.
’s Exploited Children Division & International Engagement, said he was encouraged by France’s decision to arrest Durov because Telegram has been such a haven for CSAM. “Telegram is truly in a league of their own as far as their lack of content moderation or even interest in preventing child sexual exploitation activity on their platform,” he said “It is encouraging to see the French government, French police, taking some action to potentially rectify this type of activity,” Shehan said.
, which runs the world’s largest international coordination center among law enforcement, social media platforms and tipsters to flag confirmed abuse material so it can be taken down rapidly. Telegram is based in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, which Durov, who was born in the former Soviet Union, has claimed is a neutral country that doesn’t make his platform beholden to any government. But major tech companies outside the U.S.
flags, Shehan said. Telegram offers what it describes as an option to encrypt private messages end to end, meaning only users, not the platform, can read them. But while other end-to-end encrypted messaging services, like WhatsApp, allow users to report and forward illegal content, Telegram doesn’t have such an option.
has received 570,000 reports of CSAM on Telegram in total, Shehan said. The app was launched in 2013. “They’ve been really, really clear on the team that they have no interest. We sporadically reach out, but it’s not frequent anymore,” he said. “They don’t respond at all.” A spokesperson for the U.K.
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