Pavel Durov, founder of Telegram, criticized the privacy practices of the WhatsApp application, describing the encryption on which the application relies as “the biggest scam against users.”
In his post, Durov stated that WhatsApp encryption may be the largest consumer deception of all time, as millions of users are being misled. He added that despite the app’s claims, it reads users’ messages and shares them with third parties. He stressed that Telegram had never done so, and would never do so.
The founder of “Telegram” supported his comment with a picture of a media story dealing with a lawsuit filed against the company Meta Platforms, accusing it of storing and accessing users’ private messages. This lawsuit was filed by an international group of plaintiffs in January 2026.
According to the plaintiffs, “WhatsApp and its parent company” store and analyze all messages that are supposedly “private” to users, and they have the ability to access them. The text attached by Durov indicates that through a “security vulnerability,” company workers or external contractors can bypass end-to-end encryption and view users’ private messages. The lawsuit confirms that WhatsApp does not require users’ consent to do this. (Russia Today)
