WhatsApp responds to Durov over security and usability in messaging apps

WhatsApp has publicly responded to Telegram founder Pavel Durov following his comments about the trade-off between security and usability in messaging apps.

On April 11, Durov discussed the advantages of Telegram’s cloud and secret chats while commenting on reports that deleted Signal messages were accessed through push notifications.

Durov highlights Telegram Secret Chats after Signal security controversy

Pavel Durov commented on reports that the FBI accessed deleted Signal messages through iOS push notifications, pointing to Telegram’s Secret Chats as a more secure alternative.

Durov's CodeVlad Voitenko

He argued that apps trying to combine both convenience and maximum security often end up with compromises:

"You can’t optimize for both usability and security — you’ll end up with ugly compromises, like WhatsApp leaking 95% of messages via unencrypted backups or Signal exposing messages through push notifications. Hence, you need two types of chats: 100% usable and 100% secure», — wrote Durov on X.

Nearly a day later, WhatsApp’s official account responded, saying Telegram avoids trying to combine both approaches.

"This explains a lot about Telegram - you don’t even try to do both because it’s hard. WhatsApp provides end-to-end encryption by default for 1-1 and group messages, we support multiple devices, voice and video calls. We have end-to-end encrypted backups too".

Interestingly, about an hour after publication, the reply from WhatsApp’s official account, which has around 5 million followers,  received only one like. Users also joked that a full team likely worked on the response before publishing it.