WhatsApp messages are not secret: new report shocks users

Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder, claims WhatsApp messages are so secure that no one – not even the company – can read a word. But is that really true?

When you start a new chat with friends, colleagues or family, it automatically says at the top that the Messages encrypted end-to-end be. This means that all messages are rewritten into an illegible format that is only activated when the messages reach the recipient. That sounds good at first, doesn’t it?

How secret are WhatsApp messages really?

According to research by ProPublica, a non-profit portal for investigative journalism however, this information is not entirely true. WhatsApp has more than 1000 external moderatorswho work in office buildings in Austin, Texas, Dublin and Singapore and Review millions of messages from users there. The people are not WhatsApp employees, but are employed by third-party companies, such as the management consultancy Accenture.

the Moderators use a special one Facebook-Software to go through private messages, pictures and videos. All kinds of messages that have been reported by other users because of offensive content pop up on the screens of the external employees. This includes, for example, spam, child pornography or potential planned terrorist attacks.

If one of the contents is reported, the moderators can, according to WhatsApp, examine “the last few messages”. How many are exactly that is not known, noisy ProPublica-Probably five searches. Inappropriate and illegal content is then deleted, and the users are identified and removed accordingly.

WhatsApp collects an unusually large amount of metadata

ProPublica criticizes the fact that WhatsApp leaves some highly sensitive data to the employees of external companies. The hourly wage of these external employees is the equivalent of just under 14 euros an hour.

The second charge, the ProPublica is: WhatsApp collects an unusually large amount of metadata from its users. And this includes the identity of the sender and recipient, telephone number, profile photo, status message, battery level of the phone, language and time zone as well as associated Facebook accounts. In a statement to the ARD defended parent company Facebook the procedure: The reporting function prevents the worst abuse.

WhatsApp messages are not quite as secret as Mark Zuckerberg claims. WhatsApp is too insecure for you, can also use other messenger services such as Signal.

In the US, user data and how companies deal with it are becoming an increasingly important issue. Just last week, Apple put a planned scan function of its users’ images on hold. The company wanted to find content of sexual violence against children. The reason for the stop of the new function was massive criticism from experts and civil rights groups.

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