WhatsApp is once again at the centre of a major privacy debate. A group of international users has filed a lawsuit against WhatsApp and its parent company, Meta Platforms.
The users accused WhatsApp, stating that the platform reads users’ conversations and shares them with third parties. The group of international users also claimed that WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption is just a fraud. At the same time, the CEO of Telegram, Pavel Durov, also confirmed that WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption is the biggest consumer fraud in history.
Pavel Durov also wrote on X on April 10, “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.”
He further wrote, “95% of private messages on WhatsApp end up in plain-text backups on Apple or Google servers — not E2E-encrypted. Backup encryption is optional, and few people enable it — let alone use strong passwords.”
However, there are several other alternative apps, which will potentially replace WhatsApp very soon. Several reports confirmed the two secure apps, including Telegram and Signal.
How many people use Telegram worldwide?
According to the media reports, Telegram has over 1 billion monthly users, which is around 11.5% of the global population. The reports also confirmed that in 2025, there were 58% of Telegram users were male, and 42% were female, aged 25-35.
Signal could be the best alternative of WhatsApp
Signal is also considered a good app for privacy, and it also has the potential to replace WhatsApp. According to the social media reports, Signal has 70 to 100 million monthly active users worldwide. Signal as an alternative to WhatsApp is significantly used in the US, Germany, India, Ukraine and the Netherlands.
Also Read, WhatsApp hacked? here’s how you can recover your account
