Telegram promotes financial scams and unauthorized betting operators in the channels of Spanish media outlets and public institutions

Source Summary

For one month, we analyzed the ads that Telegram integrates into more than 40 public channels belonging to Spanish media outlets and public institutions, ranging from newspapers and television networks to municipalities and Congress. In 63% of them, we found advertisements for investment services or online betting operators that are not authorized to operate in Spain , contrary to Telegram's own advertising rules. In total, 13 advertising campaigns reached more than 280,000 subscribers across these channels. On Telegram, users can encounter ads for unauthorized investment platforms in the public channel of a government ministry or scams impersonating media outlets in the official channel of a local police force . Telegram allows advertisers to choose the channels where they want their ads to appear, but it does not allow those channels to decide that they do not want certain types of advertisements. It also often prevents users from reporting ads that violate Telegram's rules or relevant legislation. Ads leading to unauthorized investment platforms or sports betting services @Carolina_Trade_notbot is the name of one of the promoted bots that, in just a few weeks, appeared more than 25 times across 20 different Telegram channels belonging to well-known media outlets and public institutions. After interacting with the bot, users are quickly sent a link to "Pocket Option," an entity that Spain's National Securities Market Commission (CNMV) has already warned is an investment platform operating without authorization in Spain . Unlike other platforms, Telegram's advertising system does not allow advertisers to redirect users directly to external websites, only to bots, channels, users, or apps within Telegram itself. Once users access these destinations, they are encouraged to register on platforms that are not authorized to provide investment services in Spain. This was the case for 63% of the advertising campaigns we collected. One of the most frequently displayed advertisements promoted an application built using Telegram's infrastructure with an interface impersonating the Spanish news outlet El Confidencial. When users clicked on it, they were shown fake interviews or news articles featuring Spanish celebrities discussing an unauthorized investment platform. In addition, Chrome's Safe Browsing protection classified the website as a "Dangerous site" after detecting phishing . The remaining five advertisements analyzed were related to betting websites, mostly sports betting. None of their names appear in the database of licensed operators maintained by Spain's Directorate General for the Regulation of Gambling , the authority responsible for regulating, authorizing, and supervising gambling activities in Spain. Beyond Spanish regulations, these advertisements also violate Telegram's own advertising policies . According to those policies , it is prohibited to promote "content, products, or services associated with deceptive or harmful financial practices" or "online or offline gambling, gaming, or casino-based activities involving real money, prizes, or goods of any value." This latter category explicitly includes sports betting and sports prediction services. Ads for sports betting prediction channels. Advertisers can choose to promote themselves in channels of public interest Each of the ads analyzed was detected in 27 public channels belonging to media outlets, including ElDiario.es , Antena 3 Noticias or Europa Press , as well as Spanish public institutions such as the Congress of Deputies , the Benicarló City Council , and the Elche Local Police . Their appearance in these specific channels is not necessarily a coincidence . Telegram's advertising system claims not to use users' personal information, but it does allow advertisers to target audiences in a very specific way: explicitly selecting the channels where they want their advertisements to appear . This functionality makes it possible, for example, for a sports betting "signals" channel to select the channel of Spain's General Secretariat for Consumer Affairs and Gambling and advertise directly to its subscribers. Disabling ads can cost thousands of euros To stop seeing ads, a Telegram user would need to subscribe to Telegram Premium , which costs around €3.19 per month in Spain. Allowing the administrator of a channel such as that of the Ministry of Labour or Maldito Bulo to disable ads for all subscribers is considerably more difficult . Certain features and benefits available to Telegram channels depend on their level. Only channels that reach Level 50 are allowed to disable advertisements within the channel . One way to increase a channel's level is by receiving Premium subscriber "boosts." Alternatively, channel administrators can obtain boosts automatically by gifting or raffling Premium subscriptions, methods that are hardly compatible with the public-interest mission of government agencies or news outlets. “Level 50 channels can remove them (ads) for their subscribers” How many boosts are required to level up? The number varies depending on the channel's subscriber count and its current level , but Telegram provides very little information on how this system works. For example, at the time of publication, the Maldita.es Telegram channel has approximately 4,000 followers and is at Level 0. To reach Level 1, Telegram indicates that it requires 9 boosts. One way to obtain them would be to gift annual Premium subscriptions (approximately €24 each) to three users, which would guarantee three boosts from each subscriber for the duration of their subscription. In other words, increasing the channel by just one level would cost at least €72 . Reaching Level 50 could ultimately cost more than €6,000.* No effective reporting mechanism The only practical option in this situation is to try to ensure that the ads shown to channel subscribers are legitimate, comply with Telegram's advertising policies, and notify the platform if they do not . Some of the campaigns we detected stopped being displayed while we were collecting data. Among those that continued appearing day after day, we reported four advertisements for promoting "Deceptive or harmful financial products" or "Gambling" in violation of Telegram's advertising policies . Telegram never informed us of the status of these reports, and several days later, at least two of the advertisements were still being displayed , including the ad impersonating El Confidencial and promoting an unauthorized investment platform through fake interviews. For another five advertisements promoting channels or bots, Telegram did not even provide users with the option to report them as potentially illegal or in violation of its rules. In other words, beyond having no control over the advertisements shown to their subscribers, channel administrators are also unable to notify Telegram that advertisements repeatedly displayed day after day should not be allowed. Examples of ads with and without the option to report Telegram is not subject to all the obligations of the Digital Services Act because it has not been designated as a "Very Large Online Platform" (VLOP), as the company claims it does not have more than 45 million monthly users in the European Union. Nevertheless, it is still required to comply with other provisions of the regulation regarding its public channels, including maintaining effective notice-and-action mechanisms that allow users to report illegal content. It is also required to inform users of the outcome of their reports and to act diligently in enforcing its own terms and conditions . *850 boosts are needed, according to the @tginfo calculator , which would be generated by giving away 284 subscriptions at a price of 23.99 (annually). Methodology First phase: We selected a sample of public Telegram channels from Spanish media outlets and public institutions with more than 1,000 subscribers and an active presence. We monitored and recorded ad campaigns that potentially violated Telegram's policies detected on these channels over the course of a month. Second phase: We reported ads that continued to be displayed on the channels for violating Telegram's policies. After a week, we checked which ads were still appearing despite having been reported.