‘Biggest Commercial Fraud in History’: Durov Slams WhatsApp Encryption

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov has launched a blistering attack against rival messaging platform WhatsApp, labeling its end-to-end encryption claims a massive deception following new revelations about third-party access to private user data.

The WhatsApp “backdoor” allegations

A recently surfaced legal complaint has detailed how Meta employees and third-party contractors allegedly have the ability to bypass WhatsApp’s heralded privacy protocols.

According to the filing, a “backdoor” in the WhatsApp source code allows these entities to “circumvent the encryption in order to view users’ private messages.” 

The access is ostensibly used to “review messages flagged for fraud” or other policy-violating conduct, but the complaint emphasizes that employees have “broad access to users’ messages.”

The platform’s users are not aware of this level of surveillance, according to Meta.  

Neither Meta nor WhatsApp asks users for explicit consent to have the contents of their private communications “intercepted, read, stored, accessed, and/or viewed” by outside parties.  

“Deceiving billions of users”

Durov took to X (formerly Twitter) to condemn the Meta-owned application. He has contrasted WhatsApp’s alleged data-mining practices with Telegram’s strict privacy standards.

“WhatsApp’s ‘encryption’ may be the biggest consumer fraud in history — deceiving billions of users,” Durov wrote. “Despite its claims, it reads users’ messages and shares them with third parties. Telegram has never done this — and never will,” he stressed. 

“Making TON great again”

Yesterday, Durov also shared highly bullish news regarding his own digital asset ecosystem. The tech billionaire announced a major technical upgrade to The Open Network (TON) blockchain, significantly boosting its performance metrics.

According to Durov, the TON blockchain has been upgraded to run 10 times faster, with the network’s block rate increasing by a multiple of six.