Roskomnadzor accused Telegram of aiding the breach of personal data. Messenger deletes 100 such services every week, but this is not enough

RKN revealed details of its claims against Telegram: the messenger allegedly “systematically creates” an infrastructure for “breaking through” the personal data of Russians and does not fight it actively enough.

According to the regulator, since 2022, the Telegram administration, at the request of the RKN, has deleted about 8.3 thousand such services, and in 2026 it will delete up to 100 “breakthrough” bots per week.

“However, the situation does not change fundamentally: new bots appear to search for personal data.

Telegram should independently prevent the disclosure of personal data of Russian citizens,

eliminate the possibility of searching for “breakthrough” services, stop providing them with the infrastructure for access to stolen personal information,” the RKN stated.

• The media have repeatedly written about how the Russian “breakthrough” market works. In particular, Russian officials with access to databases have been repeatedly caught selling information on the darknet.

• At the end of 2024, a law establishing criminal liability for the illegal storage and use of personal data databases came into force. Since then, punching services have risen radically in price.

As journalist Andrei Zakharov* noted, after the criminalization of the market

“those services that previously tried to be as close as possible to the legal sphere have now become frostbitten and are posting one sensitive leak after another.”

*Russian authorities consider him a “foreign agent”