Crime on Telegram

In recent years, an increasing number of criminals have been using the messaging app Telegram. Telegram is a very popular app that many people use to communicate with friends, family and colleagues. Telegram is a counterpart to WhatsApp and was, for a while, very popular in the Netherlands. The reason for this was that WhatsApp was considered unsafe, and people massively switched to the "safer Telegram". Of course, WhatsApp has since taken steps to make the messaging service more secure, and it now also has a solid form of encryption.

Although the Telegram app is a great way to stay in touch with others, we also see a lot of crime on Telegram. In this blog, we take a deeper dive into Telegram criminals.

Why crime on Telegram?

Criminals use Telegram for various reasons. The main reason is that as a user, you can be very anonymous on Telegram. That's why it's an ideal place for Telegram criminals to communicate without their identity being traced. Besides the mobile app, you can also open Telegram Web via your desktop. This web application offers advanced privacy settings, which makes it extremely difficult for outsiders to trace the identity of the user.

The only party that has your data is Telegram itself. To date, Telegram has not cooperated with legal requests and only does so in the case of terrorist threats and an accompanying court order (read more here). This means criminals can communicate freely without having to worry about Telegram sharing the information — especially when it comes to Telegram criminals dealing in drugs or other illegal products and services.

Besides anonymity, Telegram is interesting for another reason. Unlike WhatsApp, Telegram has groups that you can (often) join freely. There's also no maximum number of people who can join a group. This means there are sometimes groups of tens of thousands of people, giving Telegram criminals an enormous reach at the push of a button.

Making money via Telegram

Criminals also use Telegram to make money. The app also offers a way to send and receive payments, which means criminals can use it to make money from illegal activities. There are also many groups in which either scams or illegal trade take place. If you want to take a look yourself, you can do so by joining these groups freely. Want to know which groups you can join? Check out telemetr.io for more information. This lets you filter, for example, by Dutch groups in certain categories. We're certain a whole new world will open up to you. Telegram criminals are extremely active and genuinely use it as a sales platform.

Mutual communication

With its secure platform, Telegram facilitates communication between criminals. This can involve all sorts of things, think for example of cybercrime and drug-related crime. Telegram is sometimes also known as a knowledge platform where (cyber)criminals exchange knowledge — think, for example, of carrying out cyberattacks or how to commit other forms of crime. We often see that among the various forms of cybercrime, criminals each have their own specialization.

For example, there's a cybercriminal who's very good at hacking corporate databases, who then sells them to people who carry out phishing attacks.

Is it only crime on Telegram?

People sometimes think that only crime takes place on Telegram — this is definitely not the case. All platforms that offer anonymity and privacy are misused by criminals, and Telegram is no exception. What matters is that you're aware of what's going on, and that there's more to it than just the nice side of the internet that we (mostly) experience on a daily basis.

Want to know more about Telegram criminals and cybercrime?

The above is extremely interesting for cyber security professionals and online investigators working for banks, municipalities and other institutions. We can well imagine you're interested in learning more about cybercrime. We recently wrote a blog about criminal hackers. In addition, our partner CryptoCrimeTraining specializes in training KYC, CDD and AML analysts (and other investigators) on online crypto crime.