Following his arrest, Durov, who is currently out on bail, said the app would hand over users’ IP addresses and phone numbers to authorities making legal requests. He also said the app would remove some features that have been abused for illegal activity.
Benedikt Hofmann, UNODC’s deputy representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, said the app was an easily navigable environment for criminals.
“For consumers, this means their data is at a higher risk of being fed into scams or other criminal activity than ever before,” he told Reuters.
The report said the sheer scale of the profits earned by criminal groups in the region had required them to innovate, adding they had integrated new business models and technologies including malware, generative artificial intelligence and deepfakes into their operations.
UNODC said it had identified more than 10 deepfake software service providers “specifically targeting criminal groups involved in cyber-enabled fraud in Southeast Asia”.
Elsewhere in Asia, police in South Korea – estimated to be the country most targeted by deepfake pornography – have reportedly launched an investigation into Telegram that will look at whether it abets online sex crimes.
Reuters also reported last month that a hacker had used chatbots on Telegram to leak the data of top Indian insurer Star Health, prompting the insurer to sue the platform.
Using the chatbots, Reuters was able to download policy and claims documents featuring names, phone numbers, addresses, tax details, copies of ID cards, test results and medical diagnoses.
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