Stay away from WhatsApp, warns Telegram founder

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The founder of Telegram has urged people to use “any messaging app” except WhatsApp to avoid their phone being hacked.

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Pavel Durov cited a security issue disclosed by WhatsApp last week that allowed a hacker to hijack a person’s phone by sending a malicious video to their number.

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“Hackers could have full access (!) to everything on the phones of WhatsApp users,” he claimed on Telegram.

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"Every year we learn about some issue in WhatsApp that puts everything on their users’ devices at risk".

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"If you have WhatsApp installed on your phone, all your data from every app on your device is accessible".

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The Russian tech billionaire, claimed that the security flaws are “planted backdoors” to allow hackers to bypass the encryption and other security measures.

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Mr Durov has previously claimed that “WhatsApp will never be secure” unless there are fundamental changes made to how it works.

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Telegram, which is known for taking a privacy-first approach to its app, has more than 700 million active users.

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“I’m not pushing people to switch to Telegram here... Telegram doesn’t need additional promotion,” Mr Durov wrote.

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