WhatsApp fires back at Telegram CEO criticism on message privacy, backups

WhatsApp has responded to criticism from Pavel Durov, Telegram founder, regarding the platform’s security and encryption practices.

On April 11, Durov wrote on X that it is impossible to optimise both usability and security at the same time, adding that this leads to unpleasant compromises, such as leaks of 95% of messages from unencrypted WhatsApp backups or exposure of messages via Signal push notifications.

In response, the WhatsApp team said: “This explains a lot about Telegram - you don’t even try to do both because it’s hard. WhatsApp provides end-to-end encryption by default for 1-1 and group messages, we support multiple devices, voice and video calls. We have end-to-end encrypted backups too.”

By Jeyhun Aghazada