After the much uproar about Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos’ WhatsApp account on his iPhone X allegedly being hacked to extract personal details, a last blog post by Telegram founder Pavel Durov claims, “Had Jeff Bezos relied on Telegram instead of WhatsApp, he wouldn’t have been blackmailed by people who compromised his communications.”
In the blog post titled ‘Why Using WhatsApp is Dangerous’, Durov asserted that hackers have been using WhatsApp’s backdoor to extract private communications of the app users. “It became clear that this backdoor had been exploited to extract private communications and photos of Jeff Bezos – the richest person on the planet – who unfortunately relied on WhatsApp,” said the Telegram founder.
Emphasising that WhatsApp frequently uses the words “end-to-end encryption” as its marketing strategy, Durov said, “Telegram rolled out end-to-end encryption for mass communication years before WhatsApp followed suit.” He further added, “The encryption technology is not a silver bullet that can guarantee you absolute privacy by itself.”
After the reports of backdoor in WhatsApp surfaced on the Internet, Telegram’s founder Durov believed that Facebook should have apologised openly with a promise that there will be more backdoors in its instant-messaging app.
However, Facebook tried its best to appear innocent by pinning the blame on the handset’s operating system. In a recent interview to the BBC, Nick Clegg, Facebook Vice-President of Global Affairs and Communications, said what happened with Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos was not WhatsApp’s fault as end-to-end encryption cannot be hacked.
After the Bezos’ episode, UN spokesman Farhan Haq said, “The senior officials at the U.N. have been instructed not to use WhatsApp, it’s not supported as a secure mechanism.”
On the contrary, WhatsApp Director of Communications Carl Woog said: “Every private message is protected by end-to-end encryption to help prevent WhatsApp or others from viewing chats. The encryption technology that we developed with Signal is highly regarded by security experts and remains the best available for people around the world.”
Since 2013, Telegram app, which is a cloud-based instant messaging and voice over IP service, has been an open-source and its encryption fully documented. Telegram supports verifiable builds for both iOS and Android – meaning anyone can ensure the source code on GitHub and the Telegram app you download are the same thing. Users can send messages and exchange photos, videos, stickers, audio and files of any type.
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