Proportionally to the number of inhabitants, the Belgian authorities most often request user data from Telegram. They also do it a lot more since Telegram has become more flexible in this area.
By 2024, our country had asked Telegram to share user data a total of 223 times, across 594 accounts. This is evident from the crowdsourcing figures that Telegram users can each request for their country.
The recent increase is astonishing. In the first and second quarters, there were one to four requests (on the same number of users) from our country. In the third quarter, 53 requests were recorded from 125 users. And in the fourth quarter, that number tripled to 165 requests across 464 accounts.
For comparison: in the Netherlands, the total number of requests was 55 in 2024. An increase is also perceptible there because, with the exception of one request, all requests concerned the fourth quarter. In total, there were 230 users.
-It is unclear what data was requested and to what extent Telegram responded. There is an explanation for the fact that there were many more requests in the third and especially the fourth quarter. Last summer, Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov was arrested in France. Following this affair, the company softened its position vis-à-vis the authorities.
Tweakers broke down the numbers by number of requests per million inhabitants. This clearly shows how often our country requests data. With 19 requests per million inhabitants, we rank significantly higher than France (13.42), Germany (11.18) or India (10.09). Other countries have made far fewer requests relative to their population.
Belgium
