Despite Big Privacy Claims, Meta, Apple, and Google Share User Data with Law Enforcement Upon Request

Pavel Durov, Telegram’s CEO, was recently arrested and now the users of Telegram are concerned whether the CEO will give their data to law enforcement or not. Telegram has always been involved in giving a platform to criminals who do a lot of things from drug trade to selling explicit videos and images of minors and adults. It is almost considered a dark web for dummy criminals. As Durov was arrested, many users came to know that the platform isn’t encrypted as it claimed to be, and now their data can easily be accessed by law enforcements.

Telegram had handed over some of its data to German authorities in January 2024 despite it claiming to protect users’ privacy. This makes us wonder if our data on different social media apps is as private as we think. So the answer is no about 70% to 80% of the time. Despite many big companies like Apple, Google and Meta campaigning to protect their users’ privacy, they would easily handover your data to authorities when requested.

Between January and June 2023, there were 270,000 law enforcement requests received by Meta for user data and nearly 77% of the data was disclosed to the authorities by the company. Google also disclosed 81% of the user data to law enforcement agencies in May 2023. Same goes for Apple as it disclosed 83% of user data in the first half of 2023 after 180,00 requests received, and 78% of the data in the second half of 2023.

These aren’t the only big tech companies to give user data to authorities as TikTok is also doing it. In 2023, 10,000 requests were received by TikTok for user data. There is a “Transparency Report” on TikTok's website which shows the data disclosed by country by them. In the USA, 71% of the information was disclosed, 68% in the UK and 57% in Australia.

It shows that it is pretty easy for law enforcements to get access to your data and the companies often hand it over to them without much resistance. The data law enforcement authorities get from these companies include names, addresses, contact information, emails, messages, videos, images and calendars and even contact lists. There is also a gag order given by authorities to these companies that they can only say that your data has been handed over to the authorities after six months to one year after the data has been disclosed.

The Guardian says that law enforcement authorities can obtain your data by “key search warrant” or “reverse search warrant” and also from “geofence warrant” or “reverse location warrant”. Itt means that your type of address or location at a specific time can become a part of the crime. So, Telegram users and users of other apps should know that if you are a part of some criminal activities, law enforcement authorities probably know.

Read next: Bombshell Leak Reveals Big Tech’s Marketing Partners Listen to Users’ Smartphone Microphones
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World