Pavel Durov: "You'd have to be braindead to believe WhatsApp is secure in 2026"(twitter.com)
14 pointsby martinlaz6 hours ago4 comments
  • kepponen4 hours ago
    I would be highly skeptical about Telegram as well. If I would need to select either Whatsapp or Telegram, Whatsapp would be really easy choice for me, considering the background of Durov. For some reason, Telegram is extremely popular in Russia and still has managed to avoid goverment bans.
    • budgefrankly3 hours ago
      Telegram isn't even encrypted, at least not in the sense of the on-by-default end-to-end encryption used by WhatsApp, iMessage and Signal. In reality its selling point is that your chat records are placed in foreign jurisdictions so your local police can't easily access them.

      https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2024/08/25/telegram...

      Ultimately the only way to be completely sure is to use an open-source app like Signal that you've either built yourself from source you've inspected; or sourced pre-built from someone you trust.

    • atmanactive4 hours ago
      What's worse: Telegram's alleged accessibility to Moscow/FSB, or WhatsApp's proven spying and data selling to anyone?
      • kepponen3 hours ago
        Tough choice, but I would choose Whatsapp over FSB.
        • iberator3 hours ago
          Why? There is a low chance of FSB successfully prosecuting you as western Citizen doing illegal/silly things in Telegram.

          Big Five of other hand (UK, USA, AUSTRALIA etc) spy network are already working with your western government...

          So I would rather be compromised in Russia with 0 chance of extradition there than non 0 to USA, UK GERMANY etc

          (Let's say you are producing fake Coco Channel perfumes)

          • kepponen2 hours ago
            I'm not big fan of US politics at the moment, but still easily choose US spying over Russia. There is still some difference between these countries.
          • microtonal2 hours ago
            It is well known that secret services of unfriendly countries use material they can get as blackmail. The risk is not getting extradited to Russia, the risk is a Russian agent pressuring someone who works at (say) a defense company to do their bidding.
    • mnky9800n4 hours ago
      what is wrong with durov?
  • mnky9800n5 hours ago
    I suppose he may be correct but he also has a stake in the game since he made telegram. Or maybe his brother made it and he’s the face of it. I dunno. There’s always drama about something on the Russian Internet.
  • bramhaag3 hours ago
    This is really funny coming from Durov, CEO of an IM app that doesn't even have E2EE on by default (or even available for group chats). Both WhatsApp and Telegram are terrible choices.
  • 0xy4 hours ago
    WhatsApp by default exports your private key to Google Drive. If you have not done this, probably your conversation partner did.

    If neither of you have done this, don't worry the client side code is so sloppy there will be a zero click RCE that can steal all your chats anyway.