Telegram founder Pavel Durov criticized WhatsApp's privacy policies, describing the app's encryption as "the biggest scam on users."
Durov wrote in a blog post on the subject: "WhatsApp's (encryption) may be the biggest consumer scam in history, deceiving billions of users. Despite the app's claims, it reads users' messages and shares them with third parties. Telegram has never done this, and never will."
Telegram's founder attached to his comment a screenshot of a media report about a lawsuit filed against Meta Platforms accusing it of storing and accessing users' private messages. The lawsuit was filed by an international group of plaintiffs in January 2026.
According to the plaintiffs, WhatsApp and its parent company store, analyze, and have access to all messages that are supposedly "private" to users. The text attached by Durov indicates that, through a "security vulnerability," company employees or third-party contractors can bypass end-to-end encryption and view users' private messages. The lawsuit states that WhatsApp does not request users' permission to do this.
This is not the first time Durov has criticized WhatsApp's security and privacy policies. In 2022, he claimed there was a security problem in the application that allowed hackers to access all of the application users' data via phones.
