The State government on Monday informed the Kerala High Court that Telegram was a social media app that provided anonymity to users and was being widely misused by criminals for propagating pornographic materials and committing financial and credit card frauds.
When a petition seeking to ban Telegram came up for hearing, the government submitted that the group members were identified by means of user ID instead of mobile phone numbers. So, it provided more anonymity for anyone who used it unlike other messaging apps such as WhatsApp.
Telegram users could hide their registered mobile number even from the admins of groups or channels and could still be able to send text, images, videos or files anonymously. It also supported secret chat services besides having end-to-end encryption.
It was further submitted that the police were facing difficulty while dealing with the messaging app. Telegram did not provide any law enforcement support as provided by other messaging app such as WhatsApp and Facebook messenger. Besides, Telegram services were hosted outside the country and it had not given any subscriber details to law enforcement agencies in the State so far.
Hiding of registered mobile numbers made it impossible for the enforcement agencies to collect account details from the service providers. It was becoming nearly impossible to trace out the details of users because of the unwillingness of the providers to cooperate with the law enforcement agencies.
In fact, it had provided a haven for criminals to do illegal activities by misusing the anonymity provided by the app.
Therefore, the government sought to make the application provider abide by regional laws for operating in the country and put up their servers in the country.
