News Criminals begin to migrate from Telegram.

[Fixxx]

According to experts, this direct shift is a consequence of the new security measures announced by Pavel Durov, a month ago. Pavel Durov announced a radical change in Telegram's security policy on September 23, 2024. He confirmed that Telegram would provide law enforcement agencies in all countries with information about violators, including their phone numbers and IP addresses. As a result, experts estimate that the revenues of fraudulent groups have begun to decline.

Senior analyst from Digital Risk Protection at F.A.C.C.T. commented that this decrease is estimated at 22% for 70% of the groups exploiting the "Mammoth" scheme (manipulative tactics aimed at obtaining the payment card details of potential victims) over the past month. Also noted that the platform CryptoBot, which was actively used by scammers, began blocking accounts to which they were withdrawing stolen funds, contributing to this decline. The X Project group (specializes in scams) also announced its departure from Telegram and a complete transition to its own web platform. Experts believe that cybercriminals are migrating to the dark web.

"Currently, the messenger is no longer perceived as anonymous. Referring to Maslow and his hierarchy of needs, the first and most basic human need is security. For cybercriminals, this equates to anonymity" - commented director of the company "Internet Investigation" regarding this trend. He reminded that previously, the situation was the opposite: criminals migrated from the dark web to messengers due to their anonymity and large user bases.​

At the same time, outreach to victims will still occur through mass platforms. Only the internal infrastructure of the scammers is migrating to the dark web.