Telegram founder Pavel Durov has slammed Meta-owned WhatsApp for being a “surveillance tool for 13 years” that gave hackers full access to everything on the phones of WhatsApp users.
“You can use any messaging app you like, but do stay away from WhatsApp -- it has now been a surveillance tool for 13 years," Durov said in the Telegram post.
In the same post, Durov claimed that Telegram had more than 700 million active users, which was witnessing a continuous increase of almost 2 million users every day.
Referring to the security flaw that WhatsApp found last week which allowed hackers to gain control of the device by sending a malicious video, Durov said the messaging app has never been secure even for those who use the latest updated version.
In a lengthy post, Durov said hackers could have complete access to all information on the phones of WhatsApp subscribers.
He said a WhatsApp bug similar to this was discovered every year from 2017 to 2020. Prior to 2016, WhatsApp did not have encryption at all, IANS quoted Durov as saying.
The Russian tech magnate, who is on self-imposed exile, has criticised WhatsApp several times in the past. In 2019, he warned WhatsApp users and asked them to delete the app to prevent their messages and photos from being leaked. Last year, he had said the new terms of the messaging app asked users to feed all their private data to Facebook. He had earlier asserted that unless WhatsApp makes significant modifications to the way it operates, the app would never be secure.
