Prasad Nair
Mumbai, Feb 27
WhatsApp has in recent years emerged as the most preferred medium for information and communication exchange across the world. More than two billion users throughout the world use this messaging app for sending pictures and videos and for private chats. The cross-platform messaging service, owned by Facebook, which is enormously popular in almost all countries in the world, has India with its approximately 1.38 billion people as one of its primary markets.
What makes the app highly popular among masses is that it is free, easy to use and enables users to send text, audio and video messages as well as documents with the touch of your fingertips. Quite significantly, the app ensures that all communications exchanged on its medium are secure and private. Facebook has been endorsing that all messages and calls are “end-to-end encrypted” which means that the contents can be accessed by the sender and the receiver alone. Anyone who is outside the chat cannot access the messages or play the audio clips, not even WhatsApp.
Well, a spate of incidents that came to public light over the recent several months have put the promises of confidentiality under the cloud. Alarm bells are sounding regarding WhatsApp’s capacities to safeguard one’s privacy as well as prevent transmission of data stored in its server from unauthorized access and misuse. The erosion of belief started during last year’s pandemic lockdown when Bollywood superstar Sushant Singh Rajput’s death began to be investigated. Leading media channels investigating Sushant’s alleged suicide starting selective leaking of Sushant’s ex-girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty’s and some other individual’s chats in the public domain.
The liberty at which media houses publicly aired chats infringing upon individual privacy, which Supreme Court declared to be a fundamental right has once again fuelled the demand for enacting an effective and comprehensive law for data protection and privacy. WhatsApp in its official statements to the media has said that its platform protects messages with end-to-end encryption so that only you and the person you are communicating with can read what has been sent and nobody in between, not even WhatsApp can access it. It has further stated that people sign up on WhatsApp using only their phone number and WhatsApp doesn’t have access to the contents of the message.
Well, it is more said than done, as WhatsApp backup including chats, documents and all other media files are stored on Google drive on Android phones and on iCloud for those using iPhones and these mediums are beyond the purview of WhatsApp. Users should know that the backups of these files and chats on Google drive or iCloud aren’t end-to-end encrypted, leaving it open for access by an outsider. Messaging platforms are rather silent on areas where an individual’s chats are substantially vulnerable.
Electronic messages transmitted from one device to another are stored in key places such as the phone memory of the sender as well as the receiver, the service of the service provider, whichever it may be, and on the cloud, provided the user has allowed it in the settings. Also, messages aren’t encrypted in storage wherein anyone with access to sender or receiver’s phones can access the messages. Well, these are some factors which users need to be aware of while messaging apps, not only WhatsApp but various others such as Telegram, Signal, iMessage, and so on.
