Over 1M users share pornography on Telegram in Brazil
A report drawn up by SaferNet, an NGO active in promoting human rights online since 2005, found that 1.25 million users of the messaging app Telegram are in group chats or channels that sell and share images of child sexual abuse and pornographic material. One of these communities alone—which was still active when the survey was made—had 200 thousand users.
Entitled Como o Telegram tem sido usado no Brasil como um espaço de comércio virtual por criminosos sexuais (“How Telegram has been used in Brazil as a virtual trading space by sex offenders”), the report was delivered Wednesday (Oct. 23) to São Paulo prosecutors, the Federal Police, and also to French authorities, who are investigating various crimes committed on Telegram. One of these probes recently saw the company’s CEO and founder, Pavel Durov, arrested in France. He is at liberty, but cannot leave the country.
The report was produced after a search of 874 Telegram links reported to SaferNet by internet users as containing images of child sexual abuse and exploitation. SaferNet analyzed them and found that 149 of them were still active and had not been restricted by the platform. In addition, the NGO identified a further 66 links that had never been reported before and which also contained criminal content.
“We did a thorough survey of the Telegram group links that were reported in Brazil through www.denuncie.org.br—SaferNet Brasil’s reporting channel—from January 1 to June 30 this year. Of these 874 links, 141 were still active during the months in which the verification took place (July through September). Of these active links, we found 41 groups in which it was proven there was not only distribution of child sexual abuse images, but also buying and selling. It was a free market, a trade in images of child sexual abuse, with real images, some self-generated images, and other images produced by artificial intelligence,” said Thiago Tavares, president of SaferNet Brasil.
In Brazil, the Statute of the Child and Adolescent defines the sale or exhibition of photos and videos of explicit sex scenes involving children and adolescents as a crime. It is also a crime to disseminate these images by any means and to possess files of this type. In SaferNet’s view, anyone who consumes images of child sexual violence is also an accomplice to child sexual abuse and exploitation.
According to Tavares, words and codes used by criminals to index child sexual abuse and exploitation content, and also to report illegal content related to child sexual abuse in different languages, were also collected and identified, he said in an interview with Agência Brasil.
Cryptocurrencies
SaferNet also discovered that some of the content is published by bots or sold using cryptocurrencies as payment, which makes it even more difficult to identify criminals. “We identified bots dedicated to creating new images for payment. You can upload someone’s photo, for example, and this robot will give you a nude or even pornographic image, in exchange for a fee. The payment is made via [instant payment] PIX or using fintechs or payment processors spread across 23 countries.” Of these 23 payment processors partnered with Telegram, SaferNet found at least five internationally sanctioned companies processing payments in Brazil.
These tools used for transactions on Telegram, Tavares warns, demonstrate “a blatant violation of Central Bank rules” and may also be used for money laundering and terrorist financing around the world.
“In the report, we also ask the Prosecution Service not only to notify the Central Bank, but also the National Strategy to Combat Money Laundering, whose secretariat is in the Ministry of Justice and Public Security, and to carry out studies and draft recommendations to fill the gaps in the regulation on the sector in Brazil, in order to stop this type of payment intended to finance networks of sexual exploitation of children and adolescents,” he went on to say.
Complaints
Telegram is the messaging app with the highest number of reports received by SaferNet. Since 2021, it has also been one of the ten domains with the most links associated with child pornography that have been reported to the NGO. Telegram has been the target of complaints for years for not removing Brazilian communities and users who commit crimes such as racial discrimination, attacks on democracy, apology for Nazism, or the sexual exploitation of children and adolescents.
“Telegram is a shady company operating on a global scale. It has 900 million users worldwide, and, according to its founder and president, it’s run by 35 engineers. In other words, it’s a purposefully and deliberately really small team,” Tavares pointed out.
The company’s business behavior is incompatible with Brazilian law, the Federal Constitution, the Statute of the Child and Adolescent, and the basic rules of compliance for the operation and development of economic activities in any country, SaferNet said.
Agência Brasil reached out to Telegram to comment, but had not received a response by the time this report was published.
Telegram allows users to report criminal content, channels, groups or messages. This can be done by emailing abuse@telegram.org with the subject “Report user @name.” Users must include details on the reason for the complaint and wait for a reply.
