The Iraqi Ministry of Communications announced that starting from tomorrow, Sunday, it will lift the ban imposed a few days ago on the "Telegram" application due to security concerns and data leakage involving official state institutions and citizens. The application is widely used in Iraq for messaging, content sharing, and as a source of news. Some of its channels contain a lot of personal data, including names, addresses, and familial links of Iraqis.
The ministry stated in a press release that the decision was made "in response to the company's arrangements to meet the security agencies' requirements regarding the disclosure of the sources leaking citizens' data and its willingness to fully communicate with the relevant authorities and establish official channels to interact with Iraq."
Last week, the ministry mentioned that the company had not responded to its request to shut down platforms that leaked data from official state institutions and personal data of citizens.
A member of the press team at Telegram, in response to a request for comment from Reuters, stated that "publishing personal data without consent is prohibited under the app's terms of service, and our moderators routinely remove such content." He added, "We can confirm that our moderators have removed several channels sharing personal data. However, we can also confirm that no private user data has been requested from our site, nor has any been shared."
