Anyone who sends messages via WhatsApp wants to be sure that nobody has access to them. A new report now questions this.
“Nobody can read your messages – not even WhatsApp”: WhatsApp used similar statements to advertise and advertise Messenger and the built-in end-to-end encryption. A new report now raises questions in this regard. US media accuse Facebook, WhatsApp’s parent company, of having insight into the messages sent despite promises to the contrary.
After notification: Facebook inspectors read your messages
Of the Report was published by ProPublica. The research showed that WhatsApp employs thousands of temporary workers in several locations, whose job it is to check reported messages:
WhatsApp has more than 1,000 contract workers filling floors of office buildings in Austin, Texas, Dublin and Singapore, where they examine millions of pieces of users’ content. Seated at computers in pods organized by work assignments, these hourly workers use special Facebook software to sift through streams of private messages, images and videos that have been reported by WhatsApp users as improper and then screened by the company’s artificial intelligence systems. These contractors pass judgment on whatever flashes on their screen — claims of everything from fraud or spam to child porn and potential terrorist plotting — typically in less than a minute […]
For more context: Chat history is also shared
First, an AI software checks the content of the messages, then they are presented to the human reviewers. That alone may not come as a surprise at first, but the report has now revealed a fact that many users may not have been aware of. When you report a message in a chat, the previous four messages are also submitted for review. This helps to better understand the context. The online magazine 9to5 Mac opposite WhatsApp made a statement in this regard:
WhatsApp provides a way for people to report spam or abuse, which includes sharing the most recent messages in a chat. This feature is important for preventing the worst abuse on the internet. We strongly disagree with the notion that accepting reports a user chooses to send us is incompatible with end-to-end encryption.
Of course, reported messages have to be visible somehow, otherwise nobody can decide whether they violate the guidelines of the app. While the ProPublica Report is already hanging on this fact, WhatsApp could avoid future misunderstandings by explaining more transparently in the reporting process which messages are exactly forwarded to Facebook.
