The encrypted messaging platform appears to be revising its policy of cooperating with law enforcement. The latest data for Greece.
In September 2023, policemen from the Narcotics Division of the Hellenic Police arrested five men in the east of Thessaloniki, Greece. They were accused of participating in an international ring that produced synthetic drugs for sale in European capitals. It was the Greek part of an investigation conducted by Lithuanian law enforcement authorities with the assistance of Europol and the Athens DEA department.
Significant amounts of money and drugs were found in the homes of those arrested in Thessaloniki. The court documents, reviewed by iMEdD, note that “the drug orders were placed through an encrypted messaging application.” It is not named in the file, but in the trial that followed, only one application was mentioned several times –Telegram.
Founded in 2013, the platform has become popular with those who, for various reasons, want to communicate under the radar of the security agencies. Journalists and activists have used the platform in countries with a history of civil rights violations, including Russia, Belarus, Iran, and Myanmar. In the following years, however, Telegram was criticized for its refusal to cooperate even with law enforcement authorities of European countries in serious cases of drug trafficking, distribution of child sexual abuse material and scams. “Until recently, Telegram was considered the new dark web,” describes an officer of the Cyber Crime Division of the Hellenic Police on the 13th floor of the Attica Police Headquarters, who requested to remain anonymous.
Late last August, Russian billionaire and controversial platform founder Pavel Durov was arrested in Paris. He was accused by the French authorities of complicity in criminal activities within the platform and banned from leaving the country.
Soon after, Telegram pledged to strengthen its security policies and invest in working with security agencies to fight crime on its channels, which are estimated to have more than one billion users worldwide. On March 15, 2025, Durov was allowed to leave France temporarily for the first time, until April 7. The 40-year-old entrepreneur, also known as the “Russian Zuckerberg”, has temporarily returned to Dubai, where he is based. “It feels good to be home,” he wrote on his personal Telegram account.
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The 11 Greek Files
One of the changes the platform promoted after Durov’s arrest was the publication of quarterly “transparency reports” on its cooperation with national police authorities. According to the latest available data, in 2024 in Greece, Telegram fulfilled 11 requests from the Greek authorities for the disclosure of electronic identity data (phone number and IP address) for a total of 18 users of the platform, as noted in the Telegram report. A reliable source told iMEdD that about half of these files involve cases of child sexual abuse material distribution.
Telegram’s privacy policy states that if the platform receives a valid request from relevant authorities confirming that a user is suspected of criminal activity, which violates its terms of service, it may disclose the user’s phone number and IP address.
“This policy allows Telegram to aid police investigations and keep the platform safe,” a Telegram spokesperson said in response to written queries from iMEdD. “Telegram accepts reports of harmful content from governments and NGOs globally via automated email hotlines. Every report Telegram receives is processed and any content found breaching the platform’s terms of service is removed,” the spokesperson added.
He also said that content moderators are constantly crawling the public parts of the platform, using artificial intelligence to remove “millions of pieces of harmful content every day.”
The above striking change in the platform’s policy shows that Telegram is no longer an untouchable paradise for lawbreakers of all kinds. It wasn’t always like this. Until last September, the privacy policy section stated that Telegram could only provide authorities with user data about suspects in terrorism cases and only with a court order. “This has never happened so far,” the privacy policy noted.
Similar changes have been made to the platform’s terms of service. Until the end of September 2024, users were prohibited from sending spam material or engaging in scams, posting illegal pornographic material, and promoting violence on public channels and groups. Now a fourth category has been added: activities “recognized as illegal in most countries,” i.e., “child abuse, trafficking in drugs, weapons and illegal documents.”
A police officer from the Greek Cyber Crime Division with more than ten years of experience in the service told iMEdD that the platform’s attitude towards the Greek authorities has changed dramatically since last September. “We are now communicating directly with them by e-mail. They may even respond to us within a day,” he said. It is noteworthy that, according to the platform’s own data, 10 out of a total of 11 requests from the Greek authorities were processed between October and December 2024.
Telegram did not respond to iMEdD’s written queries on whether recent changes to its privacy policy may affect the platform’s policy of cooperation with authorities of states with a history of human rights violations and put at risk the personal data of journalists and/or activists.
International Ring via Telegram
The five people arrested in the Thessaloniki drug case allegedly received orders via Telegram from all over the world. Law enforcement documents reviewed by iMEdD report that police officers found drug parcels, in a car belonging to a member of the ring, ready to be shipped to Australia, the United States, Poland, Germany, France and Portugal, among other countries.
A total of 46 invoices were found for packages shipped overseas, with the alleged ring members using false return addresses. Cryptocurrencies were used for payments.
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“We Saw Everything”
As described by the experienced member of the Cyber Crime Division who spoke to iMEdD, in the previous years there was no communication between the relevant international authorities and Telegram. The same was true for Greece. “The only communication we had was with the authorities in the UAE (where Telegram and its servers are based), but that didn’t lead anywhere,” he said. “We saw everything on the platform: child sexual abuse, revenge porn, arms trafficking, drug trafficking, scams.”
According to a Europol report on trends in organized crime in Europe, published in March 2025, “almost all forms of serious and organized crime have a digital footprint” and “the internet has become the most important area of activity for organized crime.”
Fotis Grontas, a special advisor on cybercrime, has handled major cases involving Telegram. As he explains, the most common category is online scams, followed by sexual extortion and arms trafficking.
“For about 5 to 7 years now, ordinary crime groups have been moving to e-crime,” he says, adding that the platform is not popular in our country as a means of messaging, but is widely used as a tool of crime.
But why was Telegram chosen over other platforms for such purposes? First, it is a matter of convenience. All a user needs to register is a phone number. The Cyber Crime Division official said that many criminals used disposable or “ghost” numbers, which made it difficult to trace them.
The Europol report also says that legitimate encrypted platforms, such as Telegram, have large numbers of users, allowing criminals to blend in with ordinary users –to get lost in the digital crowd and be able to find a larger supply of victims.
Legal and police circles agree that the image that the platform has given internationally for years is that of a safe and uncontrolled space for all kinds of criminal activity. “This has now changed,” notes the police officer of the Cyber Crime Division at the Attica Police Headquarters. “Sooner or later, one way or another, everyone gets caught.”
