Apple and Meta have been pitted against each other for a long time. Whether Apple CEO Tim Cook is criticizing Facebook’s (now Meta) actions in light of the Cambridge Analytica scandal or Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg is weighing in on Apple’s App Store policies, saying they are hindering innovation, The two companies are enemies for, well, ages. Now, in a more recent turn of events, Zuckerberg has taken another shot at Apple by calling iMessage less secure than WhatsApp.
“WhatsApp is far more private and secure than iMessage, with end-to-end encryption that works on both iPhone and Android, including group chats,” Zuckerberg wrote in a post on Instagram.
In his post, the Meta founder said that WhatsApp comes with end-to-end encryption, something that Apple’s iMessage lacks, and that it works on Android and iOS. He also highlighted some features like missing messages and end-to-end encrypted chat backup that iOS doesn’t have yet. He was sharing a picture of WhatsApp’s oldest advertising campaign as can be seen in the US.
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WhatsApp boss Will Cathcart takes the discussion further by explaining how WhatsApp was more secure than iMessage. “If you have an iPhone, you’ve probably noticed when your texts change color from blue to blue. This means your message was sent via SMS. This decreased privacy would have happened – without warning or your consent.” WhatsApp is far more private and secure for several reasons,” he wrote in a tweet.
“And last year we introduced end-to-end encryption for backups, so you can choose to encrypt the WhatsApp messages you back up to iCloud, without worrying about Apple accessing them. Apple does not offer end-to-end encrypted backup for SMS or iMessage,” he added in another tweet. You can access the chat thread here:
We’re expanding a marketing campaign we launched back in January to tell people in the US about the importance of end-to-end encryption. There are still 5.5 billion SMS messages sent daily in the US, but SMS messages are not secure. pic.twitter.com/c0P8FW37Rw
— Will Cathcart (@wcathcart) 17 October 2022
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Interestingly, while Zuckerberg has been questioning the security of iMessage, Telegram founder Pavel Durov has on several occasions highlighted the security issues with WhatsApp. In a more recent post on his official Telegram channel, he cited several incidents when vulnerabilities in WhatsApp put user data at risk. “Every year, we at WhatsApp learn of a few issues that put everything on their users’ devices at risk… Such issues are hardly accidental – they are mounted backdoors. If a backdoor is discovered and has to be removed, another is added…,” he wrote in the post.
“You can use any messaging app you like, but stay away from WhatsApp – it’s been a surveillance tool for 13 years now,” he said.
Post Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says WhatsApp is more secure than Apple’s iMessage which first appeared on BGR India.
