Telegram founder Pavel Durov has criticized WhatsApp for flaws in security-based encryption and called it “the biggest consumer fraud in history.”
According to the CEO, WhatsApp’s widely publicized end-to-end encryption is nothing more than confusing and unsafe, leaving billions of users’ private messages exposed on unencrypted cloud servers.
Durov posted on
Looking at the statement, this means that Google, Apple, various agencies or malicious actors who have access to these platforms could read or potentially misuse these backups.
This means that even with a strong password protecting your WhatsApp backup, someone’s private conversations can still leak into unencrypted cloud storage through your contacts’ devices.
Since most users do not enable end-to-end encrypted backups, their conversations, including chats, remain unprotected.
“Apple and Google disclose backed-up WhatsApp messages to third parties thousands of times per year. Meanwhile, Telegram has not disclosed a single byte of users’ messages in its entire 12+ year history,” Durov said.
Not only Pavel Durov, but xAI founder Elon Musk has also criticized WhatsApp for these types of security flaws. In a recent post on X, Musk expressed similar concerns, saying, “Can’t trust WhatsApp.”
Additionally, security groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation have raised similar privacy concerns, stating that “unencrypted backups are vulnerable to government requests, third-party hacking, and disclosure by Apple or Google employees.”
Apart from the concerns of the tech giants, users are also highly concerned about these potential privacy threats. A US-based class-action lawsuit has been filed against Meta, alleging that WhatsApp gives Meta employees and third-party entities unauthorized access to users’ private messages, going against public privacy assurances.
Meta’s reaction
In the wake of these widely circulated concerns, Meta has dismissed these allegations as “false and absurd” while assuring users of privacy protections through its open source Signal protocol for encryption.
In response to Elon Musk’s tweet, WhatsApp addressed
