In a commentary to GSMArena, Telegram spokesperson Remi Vaughn responded to an earlier statement by Will Cathcart, head of competing messenger WhatsApp, in which he accused Telegram of failing to keep users safe and urged people to abandon Telegram.

A representative of Telegram explained that in his accusations, the head of WhatsApp made several quotes from an article by Wired, in which, he said, there are a number of errors. “There are many errors in the Wired article, and Telegram's comments and responses were ignored by the editorial board, which in turn misled Cathcart,” he said.

Telegram compiled a list of nine errors found in the Wired article. For example, the Telegram spokesperson Remi Vaughn assured that the app does not automatically track a user's location, as the journalists assured.

Hes said that this is only possible if the user publishes his or her own location. Remi Vaughn also clarified that only 0.01% of users have done so to date.

Vaughn also pointed out another mistake by Cathcart. The head of WhatsApp said that Telegram's end-to-end encryption (E2EE) had not been verified by an independent body. However, the Telegram spokesman explained that a team from the University of Udine in Italy had previously tested the MTProto 2.0 protocol, which Telegram used to protect its chats.

Accusations by WhatsApp's head

Will Cathcart accused Telegram of lacking an adequate level of security for users and urged everyone to abandon Pavel Durov's messenger. He cited a Wired article that claimed that a vulnerability had been found in Telegram that allowed even private chats to be read.

The article also noted that a section of Telegram's privacy policy still states that user data was never shared with governments, but it was not.

The head of WhatsApp acknowledged that his criticism may give the impression that he was pursuing a specific goal, but he did not encourage people to switch to WhatsApp after quitting Telegram.

“There are many other great messengers with end-to-end encryption. If one is not going to use WhatsApp, then use one of them, but not Telegram,” Cathcart concluded.