Semenzin says that specific hacking tools or spyware weren’t named, and the researchers could not verify claims that any tools would work. However, multiple types of stalkerware or spyware have been used against women over the past decade. “They feel safe in offering these types of services, which deal directly with controlling your partner or stealing her personal information and personal content and selling to somebody else,” Semenzin says. “This opens up a discussion also regarding the safety of the women who become victims of this chat.”

The AI Forensics report details 13 types of abusive content seen by the researchers, ranging from “semen pictures” and the sharing of nonconsensual images, including of minors, to doxing and targeted harassment of individuals. Often, the group’s report says, access to Telegram channels would cost between €20 ($23) and €50 or have subscriptions starting at €5 per month. Dozens of abusive images were shared every hour in some Spanish-language groups, the research says, and the researchers saw some content appear in both Spanish and Italian groups. The researchers did not publish the names of the groups and declined to share the full list of channels with WIRED, although they say they reported them using Telegram’s moderation tools.

“Nonconsensual pornography including deepfake pornography is explicitly forbidden by Telegram’s terms of service and is removed whenever discovered,” a Telegram spokesperson says. Telegram’s publicly published data claim it has blocked almost 12 million groups and channels this year—including more than 153,000 groups, in excess of 1,000 per day, linked to child sexual abuse material.

“We firmly reject the idea that Telegram profits from content we are actively taking down,” the Telegram spokesperson says. “Telegram abides by EU law and all appropriate obligations set forth by the Digital Services Act and remains in constant communication with the EU Commission.”

AI Forensics researchers are not the first to document groups on Telegram or other platforms where thousands of men are sharing nonconsensual images of women or using them to direct harassment efforts. In the last year, for instance, an Italian Facebook group called Mia Moglie (“My Wife”) was shut down after men were posting images of women in their lives. Days later, a similar image-sharing website shuttered.

However, researchers have often pointed to Telegram being a key part of the wider ecosystem for abusive sharing. “Any platform or app that can be used to harm women and girls will be,” says Adam Dodge, a lawyer and founder of EndTAB (End Technology-Enabled Abuse). “Telegram stands out because it offers anonymity, speed, and large networks of like-minded users. Image-based abuse marketplaces will always emerge and thrive in these conditions, especially when they don’t just distribute nonconsensual images but also conveniently provide access to the tools and tactics to obtain them.”

In January, reports emerged from China about how people were using Telegram to share and sell intimate images of women, including in groups of up to 65,000 people. Last year, WIRED uncovered how Telegram groups were being used to “track, dox, and degrade” women who had been posting on a London-focused Facebook group called Are We Dating the Same Guy? Other Telegram groups sharing images of women have been found in Germany, Portugal, and multiple other countries over a period of multiple years.

“These networks that we found are a very small sample of a much larger phenomenon,” says Salvatore Romano, the head of research and a cofounder of AI Forensics. “We can probably say that without Telegram, it would be much harder for these people to have such a big user base.”