A summary of the article's key points: WhatsApp faces persistent security and privacy criticism, promoted by Telegram founder Pavel Durov, who by 2026 declared that “you’d have to be braindead to believe WhatsApp is secure in 2026” and called its end-to-end encryption claims “the biggest consumer fraud in history.” Core issues include the cloud backup problem: chat histories are uploaded to Google Drive or iCloud without end-to-end encryption by default, and users must manually activate encrypted backups, leaving conversations of hundreds of millions of people exposed. Additionally, WhatsApp’s source code is entirely proprietary, preventing independent audits. Recurring vulnerabilities have surfaced, including flaws allowing remote spyware installation via an incoming WhatsApp call. The WhatsApp Web client raises alarm because executable code is dynamically loaded from Meta’s servers, allowing Meta or an attacker to compromise the client.