Telegram Founder’s Surveillance Claim on Whatsapp is a Business Strategy

Whatsapp is one of the most popular messaging applications and has over 2 billion monthly active users, dominating Facebook messenger at 1.3 billion and WeChat at 1.2 billion users. One of the most prominent features of Whatsapp that garnered the attention of the users in the first place is its end-to-end encryption method, which is always active even when the users open Whatsapp on multiple devices. However, recent controversies about messaging applications have brought into light several twisted facts about privacy and security protocols that these social media applications follow, including Whatsapp. Recently, the Telegram founder's surveillance claim on Whatsapp has raged a series of debates on social media platforms.

Telegram founder Pavel Durov has requested users to stay away from the presently Meta-owned Whatsapp. He highlighted this point due to the app's security issue that only came to light last month. Durov stated that the messaging platform puts users at risk of exposing critical information, he further urged users to use any other messaging platform, other than Whatsapp. According to the Telegram founder, hackers can get full access to the users' phones if there are successfully able to hack the Whatsapp accounts. Moreover, he alleged that Whatsapp developers have intentionally put those security measures on Whatsapp to track the users' movements.

This is not the first time that Durov has aimed such accusations against Whatsapp. Earlier, he mentioned that Whatsapp would never be secure unless the company makes fundamental changes to it. And until Meta takes a step to fix those security concerns, he advised people to stay away from the app and take several precautionary measures to protect their smartphones from getting hacked. However, some tech enthusiasts claim that since Telegram has less fan following than Whatsapp, dissing the latter is just another business strategy to enable and aid Telegram's dominance in the industry.