Delete WhatsApp, Telegram Founder Warns: What The Bezos Incident Shows Us About Meta's App

WhatsApp "has now been a surveillance tool for 13 years," according to Telegram founder Pavel Durov, who said in October 2022 — he deleted the Meta Platforms Inc. META app from his devices "years ago."

What Happened: “Hackers could have full access to everything on the phones of WhatsApp users," Durov wrote on Telegram.

He cited Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos' 2020 phone hacking incident and said, “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.”

See Also: WhatsApp Jumps On Original Content Bandwagon With Movie Starring NBA's 'Greek Freak'

WhatsApp claims to have resolved the latest vulnerability. The platform added that the glitch was discovered internally and fixed before there was any evidence of exploitation.

Why It’s Important: WhatsApp works across platforms, which means it can be used by both iPhone as well as Android users. Recently a security vulnerability called “integer overflow bug,” which was graded “critical,” affected its Android app. It could have allowed attackers to remotely install malware on a person’s smartphone during a video call. 

See Also: Android WhatsApp Users Can Exhale: A Major Bug That Exposed Data May Finally Be Fixed

Though Durov is attacking WhatsApp on security grounds, Telegram has also had its share of issues. Outside of its limited "private chats," Telegram only encrypts data between users and its servers, not between users themselves, Forbes reported.

Compared to that, WhatsApp had end-to-end encryption, making it readily available across platforms worldwide.  

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This story was originally published on Oct. 10, 2022.

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