Telegram founder takes a dig again at WhatsApp, calls it ‘surveillance tool’

Durov said in his Telegram message, “Hackers could have full access to everything on the phones of WhatsApp users.” He also claimed that WhatsApp has been keeping the user’ data under surveillance for the past 13 years. Moreover, he stated that the security issues found on WhatsApp are actually intentionally planned.

According to Durov, the planted backdoors enable governments, law enforcement, and hackers to get around encryption and other security measures.

“Every year we learn about some issue in WhatsApp that puts everything on their users’ devices at risk… It doesn’t matter if you are the richest person on Earth – if you have WhatsApp installed on your phone, all your data from every app on your device is accessible,” said Durov.

To recall, this is not the first time that the Telegram founder has taken a shot at WhatsApp for being prone to security issues. Earlier, Durov mentioned that WhatsApp would never be secure unless the company makes some fundamental changes to it. But till then he advised people to stay away from the app to save their smartphones from being hacked.

Durov explained the security and privacy features provided by Telegram and said, “I’m not pushing people to switch to Telegram here… Telegram doesn’t need additional promotion.” He stated that Telegram follows the privacy-first approach to its instant messaging app. The app currently has more than 700 million active users and it is reportedly recording steady growth with around two million users per day.

As far as it is concerned about WhatsApp’s security and privacy, the messaging platform claims to provide end-to-end encryption for all chats, video calls and texts. However, several times the app has been victim to bugs and security issues that often raise questions about its privacy.