MOSCOW, September 24. /TASS/. Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov's decision to disclose users’ IP addresses and phone numbers indicates that mandatory identification for any Internet service is becoming a reality, an expert told TASS.

Earlier, Pavel Durov said that Telegram will be able to disclose users’ IP addresses and mobile phone numbers at the request of relevant authorities. He specified that this measure concerns violators of Telegram rules and is introduced to deter criminals from abusing the messenger's internal search.

"The situation is quite logical. Today we are observing a total de-anonymization of the Internet in all its manifestations. Overall, the era of strict passport-based access to the Internet is getting closer and closer," Anton Sergeyev, the director of the Center for Software Development and Digital Services at the HSE Tikhonov Moscow Institute of Electronics and Mathematics (MIEM HSE), said.

As the expert emphasizes, under the influence of technological progress, which itself determines social relationships, including in the digital space, one can observe the so-called swinging.

"Once we had an era when everything was completely anonymized - communication was opaque, everyone behaved as they wanted and never got punished. All the nineties and zero years used to be like that. And now everything is swinging in the opposite direction," Sergeyev said.

The process of de-anonymization is facilitated by the trend towards reduction in number of communication platforms and their consolidation - soon we will see several dozen, then only a few of them. "That is, roughly speaking, we all tend to use the same messengers. Unless you use them, you fall out of communication process," he explained.