Facebook’s WhatsApp isn’t as private as it claims, reports

A report claims that messages sent on Facebook's Whatsapp isn’t as private as it claims. WhatsApp claims that messages sent between users are encrypted. But according to a report by ProPublica, Facebook pays more than 1,000 employees who work on contract around the world to read through and moderate WhatsApp messages.

The report also claimed that the company also shares certain private data with law enforcement agencies, such as the US Department of Justice. While Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has emphasized that the company can not see WhatsApp messages. 

“We don’t see any of the content in WhatsApp,” the CEO had said in 2018. The popular chat app emphasizes that “your messages and calls are secured so only you and the person you’re communicating with can read or listen to them, and nobody in between, not even WhatsApp.”

“Those assurances are not true,” the ProPublica report stated. “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.”

Facebook has also acknowledged that those workers examine through content that WhatsApp users and the service’s own algorithms flag, and the content includes everything from fraud & child porn to potential terrorist plotting.

In an interview with The Post a WhatsApp spokeswoman said, “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.”

As per a FAQ page of WhatsApp, user when reports abuse, the moderators receive “the most recent messages sent to you by the reported user or group.” ProPublica report states that because WhatsApp’s messages are encrypted, artificial intelligence systems “can’t automatically scan all chats, images and videos, as they do on Facebook and Instagram.”

The report revealed that WhatsApp moderators get access to private content when users hit the “report” button on the app, identifying a message as allegedly violating the platform’s terms of service.

As per a  former WhatsApp engineers and moderator, this forwards five messages, including the allegedly offending one, along with the four previous ones in the exchange — plus any images or videos.

Apart from messages, the contractors also get to see other unencrypted information such as names and user's profile images of WhatsApp groups, phone number, profile photo status message, phone battery level, language and any related Facebook and Instagram accounts.

A reviewer handles more that 600 complaints per day, that gives them even less than a minute per case. They can either do nothing, the user can be put on “watch” for further scrutiny or ban the account.

ProPublica's report also states that WhatsApp shares metadata, or unencrypted records that can reveal a lot about a user’s online activity, with law enforcement agencies such as the Department of Justice.