HYDERABAD : With two billion users across the world, the social media app WhatsApp had been of much help during the lockdown to many users be it tracking someone, getting help at the doorstep or dropping essential items and medicines. At the same time, many hate messages and related groups surfaced adding to the already polarised social-cultural-religious fabric of many countries especially India where 400 million people use the app for daily chats-forwards-replies for personal and official purposes.
While there have been 5G conspiracy theories against the app regarding the pandemic, a new privacy message from it has been giving the users much headache making many of them uninstall the same from their mobile phones and choose other apps like Telegram and Signal for further use. The cause of worry for many users, however, is the privacy concern -- in the middle of the flare-up over the news of WhatsApp users who alleged that their private messages exchanged on Whatsapp were leaked on search engines. In addition to that, WhatsApp recently issued its new privacy policy and terms of service to integrate with other products and services offered by Facebook.
One of the key updates by WhatsApp reads: “How we partner with Facebook to offer integrations across the Facebook company products.” Questions Ramya Murthy, a tech-savvy textile designer based in the city, “If this is not data sharing then what is? I had been using it both for business and personal messaging. Imagine very private messages getting leaked on the Internet! It’s a nightmare. I have uninstalled it from my phone and using general text features. For the past two days, I have been receiving forwards to switch to Signal. I think I will go ahead with the new app.”
This has also made local entrepreneurs swing into action. Telebu, a UCaaS company, offers an app called TelebuPing and claims to secure user data and maintain the confidentiality of the documents shared over the communication platform. Says its VP (Technology) Prasanth Yerrapragada : “We at Telebu keep our personal and professional communications separate, hence the impact on us is not much. Our app allows the enterprises to save the data shared over the app thus retaining the confidentiality of the data.” This leak isn’t new. The first incident had happened in 2019 when people could do Google search and gain access to group chats. More than 1,500 links to such groups were available on the search pages.
Back then it was reported that more than 4,70,000 group invite links had leaked. Shares Saiful Iman, 26, an ethical hacker, “The claim made by WhatsApp about end-to-end encryption that ensures that only you and the person you’re sending messages/clips can read what’s exchanged isn’t completely true. The encryption can not work if Google Drive stores the backup data. I wonder how many people can remember that WhatsApp signed a pact with Google allowing its users to save messages on Google’s cloud storage.
Now, you know how private data can leak on search engines. We should also not forget that Facebook bought WhatsApp in 2014 for $19 billion.” However, WhatsApp in an official statement addresses the users: “Neither WhatsApp nor Facebook can read your messages or hear your calls with your friends, family, and co-workers on WhatsApp. Whatever you share, it stays between you.”
Amid the new privacy policy update by WhatsApp and the row over data leakage on search engines, denizens switch to other chat apps while experts warn that, nothing that is shared digitally, is
private
— Saima Afreen saima@newindian express.com @Sfreen