Telegram founder Pavel Durov called WhatsApp a “surveillance tool” and urged users to stay away from the Meta-owned instant messaging app. Highlighting the security issue revealed by WhatsApp last month, Durov said that WhatsApp has been putting user data at risk. He urged people to use any other instant messaging app except WhatsApp.
“Hackers could have full access to everything on the phones of WhatsApp users,” he said in his Telegram message. He also claimed that WhatsApp has been monitoring user data for the past 13 years. And that the security issues found in WhatsApp are actually intentionally planted. He also said that “planted backdoors” allow governments, law enforcement and hackers to bypass encryption and other security measures.
Durov further said that “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.”
Explaining the security and privacy features provided by Telegram, Durov said, “I’m not pressuring people to switch to Telegram here… Telegram doesn’t need extra promotion.” He also said that Telegram follows the privacy-first approach for its instant messaging app. The app currently has over 700 million active users and is reportedly seeing steady growth with around 2 million users per day.
This is not the first time that the founder of Telegram has dragged down WhatsApp for being prone to security issues. Durov previously said that “WhatsApp will never be secure” unless the company makes some fundamental changes. But until then, he advised people to stay away from the app to prevent their smartphones from being hacked.