Telegram founder warns users to stay away from WhatsApp yet again

Founder Pavel Durov claimed that the company has been keeping the user's data under surveillance for the past 13 years

Messaging app Telegram's founder Pavel Durov launched a scathing attack on WhatsApp, calling the Meta-owned platform a "surveillance tool".

In a message on Thursday, Durov urged the users to stay away from WhatsApp and highlighted a security issue disclosed by the latter in September. He said that WhatsApp has been risking user data and claimed that the company had kept the user's data under surveillance for the past 13 years.

"Hackers could have full access to everything on the phones of WhatsApp users." Moreover, he stated that WhatsApp's security issues are intentionally planned.

"Every year we learn about some issue in WhatsApp that puts everything on their users' devices at risk... It doesn't matter if you are the richest person on Earth - if you have WhatsApp installed on your phone, all your data from every app on your device is accessible," he added.

Last year, Durov said that the new WhatsApp terms ask users to feed all their private data to Facebook. He said he is not pushing people to switch to Telegram this time.

"With over 700 million active users and more than 2 million daily signups, Telegram doesn't need additional promotion. You can use any messaging app you like, but stay away from WhatsApp -- it has now been a surveillance tool for 13 years," he claimed.

In 2020, Durov alleged that WhatsApp's systems were not as secure as they made out to be.

In a blog post titled 'Why using WhatsApp is dangerous', Durov said WhatsApp marketed end-to-end encryption as some magic incantation that is supposed to make all communications secure automatically.

"However, this technology is not a silver bullet that can guarantee absolute privacy by itself," he said.

Durov claimed that Telegram's 'Secret Chats' is significantly more secure than any competing means of communication.

"Don't let yourself be fooled by the tech equivalent of circus magicians who'd like to focus your attention on one isolated aspect, all while performing their tricks elsewhere. They want you to think about end-to-end encryption as the only thing you have to look at for privacy. The reality is much more complicated," the executive wrote.