On Monday, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of the tech company Meta*, posted a photo on Instagram with a WhatsApp ad emphasizing the main advantage of its messenger over its competitors' products — support for end-to-end encryption on both iOS and Android.
"WhatsApp is far more private and secure than iMessage, with end-to-end encryption that works across both iPhones and Android, including group chats," Zuckerberg wrote.
The advertisement displayed on the wall of Pennsylvania Station in New York is simple and makes fun of the colored "bubbles" for messages used on iMessage. Instead, users are encouraged to use WhatsApp for private communication with end-to-end encryption. The ad’s slogan reads: “Protect your personal messages across devices with end-to-end encryption. Always message privately.”
Zuckerberg also points out some features, like disappearing chats and end-to-end encrypted backups, that iMessage doesn’t have.
End-to-end encryption, implemented for chats on WhatsApp in 2016, is a data transfer method in which only users participating in the communication have access to messages. Thus, the use of end-to-end encryption does not allow access to cryptographic keys from third parties.
The method was implemented for chats on WhatsApp in 2016 and added for backups last year too.
Telegram founder Pavel Durov warned that hackers can get full access to all the contents of phones where WhatsApp is installed. According to him, similar problems with the messenger's security system happened from 2017 to 2020, and until 2016 there had been no data encryption on WhatsApp at all. Durov stressed that WhatsApp "has been a surveillance tool for 13 years."
*Meta is a company banned in Russia over extremism.