Hence, recently, the CEO and founder of the well-known and one of the most secure instant messaging apps, Telegram, Pavel Durov, has commented on the case and how social network giant Facebook-owned WhatsApp deals with its users’ privacy.
Telegram Founder: WhatsApp ‘Will Never Be Secure’
The most used instant messaging app, of course, WhatsApp has recently suffered security flaws, as recently, the company itself has shared information about the links that are passed through the app with third parties, and not only that, even just after this security breach, again we discovered about a severe vulnerability that allowed a hacker to put spyware on our smartphones. Hence, recently, the CEO and founder of the well-known and one of the most secure instant messaging apps, Telegram, Pavel Durov, has commented on the case and how social network giant Facebook-owned WhatsApp deals with its users’ privacy. Also Read: How To Increase WhatsApp Video Status Limit Of 30 Seconds
WhatsApp ‘Will Never Be Secure’
As recently, Telegram founder Pavel Durov posted a message on his blog where he simply warning that the most used instant messaging app, WhatsApp, is not as safe as we think, when they fix a vulnerability or security flaws, another one simply appears. Last year a similar security flaw affected WhatsApp video calls, allowing a hacker to access all the users’ data. Now, similarly, and through buffer overflow, it is possible to access all mobile data with just one audio call, and the most shocking thing is that you do not even have to pick up the call. Although they may seem like simple vulnerabilities associated with confusion, the founder of Telegram, Pavel Durov, says that these are backdoors covered as vulnerabilities. The main problem is that the well-known instant messaging app WhatsApp itself, unlike Telegram, is a closed source, and they do everything possible thing to hide it. Nobody can investigate their code in search of vulnerabilities as well. However, operating in the United States is not easy. Telegram stated that a few weeks ago while working in the country, the app team received three infiltration attempts by the FBI. For this reason, Pavel Durov affirms that WhatsApp shares its encryption keys with the FBI so they can directly implement those back doors to access messages and information about their objectives. To support this idea, Pavel Durov claims that Telegram is banned in Russia and Iran, where both governments asked him for encryption keys to access the platform’s messages. Hence for refusing the proposal given by the governments of those countries, the app was banned. While the most used instant messaging app WhatsApp, despite being American, does operate in both countries normally. The existence of back doors is something that spying agencies do for anti-terrorist purposes or geopolitical interests, simply to spy on certain people who may pose a danger to the country. Hence, it is permitted for them to do that, but the fact is that doing so simply opens the door for hackers to discover that vulnerability. Moreover, the founder of the well-known instant messaging app, Telegram, Pavel Durov, even goes so far as to claim that WhatsApp will never be secure. In 2012, when he started working on Telegram, WhatsApp sent the messages in plain text, allowing the government, hackers, operators, or administrators of WiFi networks to read the notes, which was a real mess.
— Pavel Durov (@durov) May 15, 2019 Despite adding encryption after the launch of Telegram, Pavel Durov says that “this was a marketing tactic since the key to decoding the messages is in the hands of governments like Russia”. Interestingly, despite having encryption, WhatsApp began to insist users store backup copies of their messages in Google Drive. With this, the FBI can force the tech giant Google simply to grant them access to a person’s account and be able to read those messages without any issue. But, if you have not uploaded the messages, then you can simply search for the conversation that you have had with other people that is uploaded since WhatsApp can give access to the metadata and know with whom and when you are talking. With this, we have a pretty worrying history of WhatsApp, where authorities can access messages in three ways: “By having the encryption key, With messages stored in Drive, And Through the backdoors hidden as vulnerabilities. Also Read: 10 Best Alternatives To WhatsApp That Respect Your Privacy WhatsApp has never been 100% secure, unlike the well-known instant messaging app, Telegram, which has not had a single serious security problem since it started 6 years ago and has endangered users’ privacy, as well as no data leaks appeared. Hence, Pavel Durov encourages that users should stop using WhatsApp and start using alternatives to WhatsApp for their security. So, what do you think about this? Simply share all your views and thoughts in the comment section below.
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