Star Health Leak: Telegram Rejects Blanket Monitoring, Seeks Request For Data Removal

Telegram has told the Madras High Court that it won’t be able to monitor every account on its platform to stop the sharing of leaked customer data from Star Health, Reuters reported.

Instead, the messaging platform said it would deal with any harmful content if reported to them, following Indian regulations.

Telegram’s lawyer also argued that if the platform tried to watch all chats on its own, it would go against Indian privacy laws.

However, Telegram said it is ready to work with Star Health to remove data from specific accounts that are flagged.

Notably, personal data of millions of Star Health’s customers was leaked on Telegram in September this year.

Data of Star Health customers such as policy and claim documents, including names, contact info, addresses, tax details, copies of ID cards, test results and medical diagnosis was reportedly available for download on the Telegram app.

Days after the leak, the hacker claimed that the insurer’s chief information security officer (CISO) sold him the data. 

In a post on X, the hacker, with the alias ‘xenZen’, claimed that CISO Amarjeet Khanuja later even attempted to renegotiate the deal and demanded more money for continued access to the data on the company’s servers. 

Meanwhile, Telegram at the time, said in a statement that the bots reported to Telegram for sharing Star Health data were immediately removed and moderators are monitoring to prevent them from being recreated. 

The company further added that the sharing of private information on Telegram is expressly forbidden and such content is deleted whenever it is found.