Telegram founder Pavel Durov has slammed Meta-owned WhatsApp for being a surveillance tool for 13 years, in a lengthy post highlighting a recently discovered security issue. He added that WhatsApp has never been secure, so even after you update the app to the latest version, it’s “not really secure”. Durov mentioned the security vulnerability that WhatsApp confirmed allows hackers to gain control of a device simply by sending a malicious video.
“Every year, we learn about some issue in WhatsApp that puts everything on their users’ devices at risk. This means that it is almost certain that there is already a new security flaw,” Durov noted, He said a similar vulnerability was found in WhatsApp in 2020, 2019, 2018 and 2017. Before 2017, WhatsApp didn’t have encryption at all, he noted in his post.
Although WhatsApp claimed it had fixed the vulnerability, it failed to convince Durov, who said he was not killing the world’s most popular messaging app to promote Telegram, which has better security and privacy. There are facilities. “I am not here to push people to switch to Telegram,” he said. According to Durov, Telegram, which has more than 700 million active users and more than 2 million daily signups, “doesn’t need additional promotion.”
Durov implied that whether you’re rich or poor, if you use WhatsApp, you’re always going to risk inadvertently giving crooks unauthorized access to your device. Durov said that because of these recurring vulnerabilities in WhatsApp, he stopped using it and uninstalled it from his device years ago. “Installing it creates a door for your phone to come in,” Durov said.
Durov’s latest attack on WhatsApp adds to his criticism over the meta-owned app. Earlier, he lashed out at WhatsApp for prompting its users to accept its new terms of service, which, according to privacy advocates, are not in the best interest of users as they are required to disclose sensitive information about the device to the user. required, among others.
Post WhatsApp is a surveillance tool, stay away from it: Telegram founder first appeared on BGR India.
