Is WhatsApp reading your private chats? Elon Musk, Pavel Durov say you cannot trust it, Meta responds

X-owner Elon Musk and Telegram CEO Pavel Durov have publicly questioned the privacy practices of Meta-owned platform WhatsApp. Both tech leaders have posted strong statements on X, accusing the messaging platform of not being as private as it claims. However, Meta has rejected these accusations and defended WhatsApp’s encryption system.

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The discussion began after Musk reacted to a report claiming that WhatsApp allegedly accessed private messages without user consent. Sharing his thoughts, Musk wrote, ‘Can’t trust WhatsApp.’

He also used the moment to promote his own platform’s messaging feature. In another post, Musk encouraged users to switch to X Chat for communication. He said that X Chat ‘comes with this great benefit of actual privacy.’

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WhatsApp quickly pushed back against the claims. In response, the company said the allegations are false and absurd. ‘The claims in this lawsuit are categorically false and absurd. WhatsApp has been end-to-end encrypted using the Signal protocol for a decade so your messages cannot be read by anyone other than the sender and recipient,’ the company wrote.

Later, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov also criticised WhatsApp’s security claims. Posting on X, Durov questioned the platform’s encryption and accused it of misleading users.

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He wrote, ‘WhatsApp’s encryption may be the biggest consumer fraud in history — deceiving billions of users. Despite its claims, it reads users’ messages and shares them with third parties. Telegram has never done this — and never will.’

This highlights the growing rivalry among messaging platforms. Also, it has once again raised an important question for us as users: how secure are the messaging apps we rely on every day?

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Ayushi Jain

Ayushi works as Chief Copy Editor at Digit, covering everything from breaking tech news to in-depth smartphone reviews. Prior to Digit, she was part of the editorial team at IANS. View Full Profile