Meta CEO says Mark Zuckerberg says WhatsApp is more secure than Apple’s iMessage

Apple and Meta have been at odds at each other for a long time now. Whether it is Apple CEO Tim Cook critising Facebook’s (now Meta) actions in light of the Cambridge Analytica scandal or the Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg weighing down on Apple’s App Store policies saying that they are hampering innovation, the two companies have been foes since, well, forever. Now, in a more recent turn of events, Zuckerberg has taken another shot at Apple by calling iMessage less secure than WhatsApp.

“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 in a post on Instagram.

In his post, the Meta founder said that WhatsApp comes with end-to-end encryption, something that Apple’s iMessage lacks, and it works across Android and iOS. He also highlighted some of the features such as disappearing messages and end-to-end encrypted chat backups that iOS doesn’t have yet. He was sharing an image of WhatsApp’s lastest ad campaign as seen in the US.

WhatsApp boss Will Cathcart took the discussion forward explaining how WhatsApp was more secure than iMessage. “If you have an iPhone, you’ve probably noticed when your texts change color out of the blue. That means your message was sent via SMS. This reduced privacy – happens without warning or your consent. WhatsApp is far more private and secure for many reasons,” he wrote in a tweet.

“And last year we introduced end-to-end encryption for backups, so you can choose to encrypt the WhatsApp messages you back up to iCloud without having to worry about Apple having access to them. Apple doesn’t offer end-to-end encrypted backups for SMS or iMessage,” he added in another tweet. You can access the chat thread here:

We’re expanding the marketing campaign we started back in January to tell people in the U.S. about the importance of end-to-end encryption. 5.5 billion SMS messages are still sent daily in the U.S., but SMS messages aren’t secure. pic.twitter.com/c0P8FW37Rw

— Will Cathcart (@wcathcart) October 17, 2022

Interestingly, while on one hand Zuckerberg has been questioning iMessage’s security, Telegram founder Pavel Durov, on several occasions highlighted safety issues with WhatsApp. In a more recent post on his official Telegram channel, he cited numerous incidents when vulnerabilities in WhatsApp put user data at risk. “Every year, we learn some issue in WhatsApp that puts everything on their users’ devices at risk…Such issues are hardly incidental — they are planted backdoors. If one backdoor is discovered and has to be removed, another one is added…,” he wrote in the post.

“You can use any messaging app you like but do stay away from WhatsApp — it has now been a surveillance tool for 13 years,” he added.

The post Meta CEO says Mark Zuckerberg says WhatsApp is more secure than Apple’s iMessage appeared first on BGR India.