Creator of “Eye of God” Accuses Telegram of Data Leaks

Evgeny Antipov, the creator of the Telegram bot “Eye of God” (Glaz Boga), which specializes in searching for personal data, gave an extensive interview to Meduza (designated as a foreign agent). In the interview, he discussed his conflict with Telegram, connections with the criminal world and law enforcement, and upcoming projects he plans to launch.

In early July, the “Eye of God” channel and chats disappeared from Telegram. This bot was one of the main Russian services offering personal data lookup. The block came after a court sided with Roskomnadzor (RKN) and accused “Eye of God” of violating citizens’ rights to “personal and family privacy.” While this is not the first such platform to be blocked at the authorities’ request, RKN only began a real campaign against the black market for personal data after Bellingcat published an investigation into the FSB’s surveillance and poisoning of Alexei Navalny, which was based on information obtained through data lookups.

Currently, Antipov is trying to get his main channel unblocked, and if that doesn’t happen, he threatens to release compromising information. According to him, corruption is rampant on Telegram, data is leaked “to everyone,” including Roskomnadzor, and the messenger’s administration doesn’t care about its users. He claims he could have destroyed Telegram long ago but plans to launch his own messenger first to attract users to his platform.

Antipov asserts that it’s impossible to completely block “Eye of God” because any user can create a clone of the bot-there are already 575,000 such clones. He says that previously, the bot provided information from leaked databases, but now it only uses open sources (such as social networks, messengers, and classified ad sites), making the information completely legal and not secret.

Antipov revealed that he gives law enforcement officers free access to the full version of “Eye of God,” but only for a few months. To renew their subscription, he asks them to issue him a letter of appreciation. He claims that the most valuable information is not about citizens themselves, but about who is searching for whom-this helps identify who law enforcement and journalists are currently investigating and who will be in the news soon.

At the same time, Antipov openly admits he intends to share bot data with authorities:

If I need to report that someone is breaking the law or killing people after finding them through my bot, I will do it. My goal is to make a useful product, not to cover up your crimes and get punished for it.

Moreover, the creator of “Eye of God” confessed that the service administration periodically “monitors” its users, tracking what information they search for:

This is a secret feature of “Eye of God”: I have much more data than it seems. Our neural network scans user queries, and then moderators manually review its work.

To “legalize” the service, “Eye of God” not only had to remove data from leaked databases but also hide information about employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the FSB. The information itself wasn’t deleted; the bot simply hides these abbreviations in its results.

Antipov does not rule out close cooperation with the authorities, but he doesn’t yet know with whom or in what form. As an example, he mentioned an app he created that, when a smartphone camera is pointed at a stream of cars in augmented reality, shows drivers’ unpaid fines. Such an app would be useful for the traffic police (GIBDD), but the agency can’t purchase it due to bureaucratic procedures (they need to develop software requirements, announce a tender, review applications, select a winner, and it’s not guaranteed that the “Eye of God” owner would win).

Antipov wants his channel back to launch a new service and inform his audience about it:

We wanted to show that we’re moving from the gray area of search to a more “white,” serious, business-oriented process-but they cut us off by shutting down the channel.

I have an idea for a social rating monitoring service-something like a combination of “SPARK-Interfax” for checking legal entities and “Kro-Inform” for checking individuals. Our system scans all social networks and all sites with ratings and reviews. You enter your employee’s name, click “monitor,” and find out if they have any fines. Or you enter your child’s nanny’s name and see across all social networks whether she’s in 18+ or other questionable groups. The system will continuously monitor the person you need.