In an article published in the Durov’s Channel Telegram channel, the founder of the messenger explained why he considers WhatsApp unsafe to use.
Durov refers to the latest news, which reports on the vulnerability of WhatsApp: Israeli hackers were able to install malware on devices of messenger users. The company has already announced the release of the patch and calls to update the application to the latest version. A similar situation has already happened in the past year: then attackers could access the data through an incoming video call to WhatsApp.
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Facebook messenger does not reveal the code of its applications, moreover, it specifically complicates its analysis. Telegram also publishes source codes in open access.
According to Durov, WhatsApp could have been asked to create a “black entrance” for the special services: the FBI Telegram team attempted to be contacted three times during their two-week stay in the United States. WhatsApp has been created and has been working in this country for 10 years. And the fact that the messenger is not blocked in Iran and Russia, where Telegram is prohibited, indicates that the authorities of these countries can spy on their citizens through the Facebook product.
The introduction in 2016 of end-to-end encryption in WhatsApp coincided with the advancement of chat backups to the cloud. Backups are not provided with the appropriate level of protection. In addition, metadata about users is sold to third parties by the parent company – Facebook.
In the past and the year before last, the founders of WhatsApp left the company. By their own admission, they “sold the privacy of their users,” although they did not cover the details of vulnerabilities and messenger
Telegram did not appear in serious data leaks for all six years of its existence, whereas in WhatsApp they occur every few months. Durov says that he did not give out a single byte of information to outside organizations or people.
And if every Telegram user convinces three of his friends to remove WhatsApp and fully switch to Telegram, then Telegram will become more popular than WhatsApp. The era of greed and hypocrisy will end. The era of freedom and privacy will begin.