- Confidential and Proprietary - Luminar Annual Threat Landscape Report Page 27 harder for law enforcement to track down illegal activity and those behind it. 55 Overall, it seems that Telegram is chosen by cybercriminals because it has a lenient approach to content moderation compared to other social media platforms. It can be very difficult for such an app to filter out illicit contents without overly rigorous monitoring of users and their intentions. 56 Generally, Telegram has been reluctant to take down contents from its app. For this reason, hate groups right-wing extremists have turned Telegram into their safe haven. Telegram had also been heavily used by Islamic State supporters before European police authorities worked with the company to take down accounts associated with the terrorist group. According to Telegram’s privacy policy, it may disclose one’s IP address and phone number to the relevant authorities, if the company receives a court order that confirms a user is a terror suspect. 57 Right wing groups have operated on it freely until January 2021, when Telegram took down several well-known public groups filled with racist posts related to the January 6 th attacks on the US Capitol. However, many other groups remained publicly available, allowing new members to join. 58 In the same month, the German Federal Criminal Police (BKA) accused Telegram of failing to respond to requests to delete far-right content. 59 Researchers found that cybercriminals evade their detection by using the privacy protection offered by Telegram together with additional tools such as virtual private networks (VPNs), making them almost impossible to detect. Even if devices are seized, it is unlikely that they will provide sufficient evidence on the devices due to the nature of self-destructing messages and other popular techniques. 60 For instance, an attacker can easily create a new bot without disclosing identifying information, making it difficult to establish attribution. 61 Despite the difficulty in monitoring cybercriminals active on the app combined with the rise in its user- base, law enforcement agencies and organizations might take additional steps to gather more information about cybercriminal activity performed on Telegram. For instance, law enforcement organizations might take advantage of Telegram’s vulnerabilities. In 2018, it was reported that the German police had hacked Telegram and used it to spy on citizens for years. There are many software tools designed to export members of Telegram groups, the most popular one is called Telegram Scraper, the name for AI apps that search through Telegram group chats to compile information about 55 https://www.cybersprint.com/news/how-criminals-are-tracked-down-on-telegram 56 https://www.ft.com/content/cc3e3854-5f76-4422-a970-9010c3bc732b 57 https://telegram.org/privacy?setln=it 58 https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/15/parler-telegram-chat-apps/ 59 https://www.dw.com/en/german-police-pressure-telegram-to-delete-far-right-content/a-60453402 60 https://www.welivesecurity.com/2022/02/10/hidden-plain-sight-dark-web-spilling-social-media/ 61 https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2021/04/22/forget-whatsapp-new-telegram-warning-for- millions-of-windows-10-users/?sh=3b2cafa78575