Indian insurance company sues Telegram – media 

Star Health has filed a lawsuit against the platform after a hacker leaked clients’ personal data 

Star Health, an Indian insurance company headquartered in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, has sued Telegram and a self-styled hacker after its clients’ personal data was leaked on the platform, Reuters has reported.  

The company, according to the agency, has received a temporary injunction from the state court ordering Telegram and the hacker to block any chatbots or websites in India that make the data available online. Star Health has also filed a lawsuit against US-listed software company Cloudflare, claiming that the leaked data hosted on various websites was facilitated by its services. The court has issued notices to Telegram and Cloudflare, and will next hear the case on October 25.  

This comes a week after UK-based security researcher Jason Parker alerted Reuters about Star Health customer data being traded on hacker forums, with a user under the alias xenZen claiming that chatbots they allegedly created possessed 7.24 terabytes of data related to over 31 million customers of the Indian insurance company.

Telegram is one of the most widely used messaging apps in India, with over 5 million registered users. Globally, the Dubai-based app has around 900 million users. Its popularity stems from various features beyond messaging, including the ability to store and share large amounts of data through anonymous accounts and create customizable chatbots that automatically deliver content based on user requests.

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Telegram has recently come under scrutiny after its founder, Pavel Durov – a Russian tech entrepreneur who is also a citizen of France, the UAE, and St. Kitts and Nevis – was detained upon landing at Paris-Le Bourget Airport last month.

The tech billionaire is being accused of failing to curb criminal activities on his platform. In a statement, the company insisted that the company complies with EU laws and content moderation policies. Durov was later released on bail of €5 million ($5.55 million) and is prohibited from leaving the country while the case is ongoing.

Shortly after Durov’s arrest, media reports in India suggested that New Delhi also began an investigation into Telegram over alleged concerns that the messaging app was being used for criminal activities such as extortion and gambling. Online publication Moneycontrol cited a government official as saying the app could end up being banned in India.