MOSCOW, October 2. /TASS/. The Telegram messenger disclosed telephones and IP addresses of dangerous criminals even before, founder of the messenger Pavel Durov said on his official account.

The businessman made the statement the previous post of September 23 in his blog, when he said that Telegram would be able to disclose such data against justified requests of government authorities.

"My previous post may have seemed to announce a major shift in how Telegram works. But in reality, little has changed. Since 2018, Telegram has been able to disclose IP addresses/phone numbers of criminals to authorities, according to our Privacy Policy in most countries," Durov explained.

"Whenever we received a properly formed legal request via relevant communication lines, we would verify it and disclose the IP addresses/phone numbers of dangerous criminals. This process had been in place long before last week," he added.

Durov cited statistics for Brazil, with data disclosed upon 203 requests in three quarters of 2024. Almost 7,000 requests were satisfied in India, the largest market for the messenger, he added.