Pavel Durov urged users to stay away from WhatsApp

The founder and CEO of Telegram Pavel Durov has urged people to use any messaging app except WhatsApp to avoid their phone being hacked.

Pavel Durov claimed that the security flaws disclosed by WhatsApp last week allowed hackers to hijack any user’s phone by sending a malicious video to their number and are “planted backdoors” to allow governments, law enforcement agencies and hackers to bypass the encryption and other security measures.

Durov has previously claimed that “WhatsApp will never be secure” unless there are fundamental changes made to how it works. “That's why I deleted WhatsApp from my devices years ago. Having it installed creates a door to get into your phone,” said Durov.

He further said, “I’m not pushing people to switch to Telegram here... Telegram doesn’t need additional promotion. You can use any messaging app you like, but do stay away from WhatsApp – it has now been a surveillance tool for 13 years.”

“Every year, we learn about some issue in WhatsApp that puts everything on their users’ devices at risk. Which means it’s almost certain that a new security flaw already exists there. Such issues are hardly incidental – they are planted backdoors. If one backdoor is discovered and has to be removed, another one is added,” added Durov.

This comes after WhatsApp issued a security advisory in September. It released a fix for a vulnerability that could allow a hacker to plant malware on one's device while they are on a video call. The security flaw has been rated ‘critical’. Another flaw it flagged could allow an attacker to plant a crafted video file.