In a striking example of the information, the instant messaging service stores on its users and can be forced to disclose by authorities, Telegram has revealed the names of administrators, their phone numbers, and the IP addresses of channels accused of copyright infringement in compliance with an Indian court order.
After a teacher sued the company for failing to take sufficient steps to stop the unauthorized dissemination of her course materials on the platform, the app’s operator was compelled to share the data. Neetu Singh, the teacher who filed the lawsuit, said that several Telegram channels were reselling her study materials at a discount without her consent.
An Indian court has commanded Telegram to follow Indian law and provide information regarding those running such channels. The privacy policies and legislation of Singapore, where Telegram’s physical servers for storing user data are located, were invoked as justifications for not releasing user information. However, because Telegram elected to have its servers outside India, the Indian court responded by saying that the copyright holders couldn’t be left “totally remediless against the actual infringers.”
Justice Prathiba Singh stated in a ruling last week that Telegram has supplied the data in accordance with the earlier ruling.
With the explicit instruction that neither the plaintiffs nor their counsel shall reveal the said data to any third person, except for the current proceedings, let a copy of the said data be sent to Id. Counsel for Plaintiffs. To do this, disclosure to governmental authorities or the police is permitted, according to the court, as first noted by LiveLaw.
A Telegram representative refused to confirm whether the company shared users’ personal information.”Telegram stores either extremely little or no user data. We believe this was the situation here since, in most cases, we cannot access any user data without specific entry points. Therefore, we cannot confirm the sharing of any sensitive information in this case,” Telegram spokeswoman Remi Vaughn.
