- Pavel Durov criticized trust in WhatsApp after a U.S. lawsuit claimed Meta could access many WhatsApp messages.
- WhatsApp denied the claim, calling the lawsuit “a frivolous work of fiction.” Bloomberg reported the denial.
- Durov also said his team found “multiple attack vectors” and posted about the issue on X.
- Researchers and news investigations have previously reported security and content moderation issues at Telegram, including past bugs and claims that the company can access some messages. See related reporting: SlashGear, a 2017 MIT project (PDF), a 2021 research page (mtpsym), a 2022 paper (ScienceDirect), and a 2024 New York Times investigation.
- Other messaging services also faced scrutiny: Elon Musk promoted XChat, and users and auditors flagged security shortcomings. See Musk’s posts on X and X, the auditor’s report (Trail of Bits), and researcher notes (ZachXBT).
Pavel Durov, founder of Telegram, publicly criticized trust in WhatsApp on X after a lawsuit filed last week in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco alleged that Meta could access “virtually all” messages on the platform. Durov called relying on WhatsApp for secure messaging “braindead” and said his team found “multiple attack vectors.”
A WhatsApp spokesperson denied the allegations to Bloomberg, saying, “Any claim that people’s WhatsApp messages are not encrypted is categorically false and absurd. This lawsuit is a frivolous work of fiction.”
The suit alleges Meta misrepresented WhatsApp’s privacy and security. The lawsuit is the only public claim so far that Meta can read WhatsApp messages at scale; no independent court finding has been cited in the reporting.
The article also notes past security and moderation issues at Telegram. Reporting and research have documented problems including students snooping on statuses in 2017 (MIT project), 2021 bugs allowing message plaintext recovery and man-in-the-middle attacks (mtpsym), and a 2022 protocol vulnerability (ScienceDirect).
A 2024 New York Times investigation reported channels selling narcotics and weapons and quoted employees saying the company “rarely checks” law enforcement email requests. The same piece said, “The company can gain access to messages unless users select a secret chat option with end-to-end encryption,” and that on some occasions the company retrieved former employees’ messages.
The article also covers competitive reactions. Elon Musk promoted XChat on X and later posted again (X); users added a Community Notes fact-check and security reviewers raised concerns, including a Trail of Bits report (PDF) and researcher comments (ZachXBT).
Note: End-to-end encryption means only the sender and recipient can read message contents (service providers cannot read them unless users use non-encrypted options). For further reading, the original report linked to Protos’ channels on X, Google News, and YouTube.
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