Facebook’s encrypted messaging service WhatsApp isn’t as private as it claims, according to a new report.
The popular chat app, which touts its privacy features, says parent Facebook can’t read messages sent between users. But an extensive report by ProPublica on Tuesday claims that Facebook is paying more than 1,000 contract workers around the world to read through and moderate WhatsApp messages that are supposedly private or encrypted.
What’s more, the company reportedly shares certain private data with law enforcement agencies, such as the US Department of Justice.
The revelation comes after Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly said that WhatsApp messages are not seen by the company.
“We don’t see any of the content in WhatsApp,” the CEO said during testimony before the US Senate in 2018.
Privacy is touted even when new users sign up for the service, with the app emphasizing 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,” said the ProPublica report. “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 acknowledged that those contractors spend their days sifting through content that WhatsApp users and the service’s own algorithms flag, and they often include everything from fraud and child porn to potential terrorist plotting.
A WhatsApp spokeswoman told The Post: “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.”
According to WhatsApps’s FAQ page, when a user reports abuse, WhatsApp moderators are sent “the most recent messages sent to you by the reported user or group.” ProPublica explained 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.”
Instead, the report revealed that WhatsApp moderators gain 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.
This forwards five messages, including the allegedly offending one, along with the four previous ones in the exchange — plus any images or videos — to WhatsApp in unscrambled form, according to unnamed former WhatsApp engineers and moderators, who spoke to ProPublica.
Aside from the messages, the workers see other unencrypted information such as names and profile images of a user’s WhatsApp groups, as well as their phone number, profile photo status message, phone battery level, language and any related Facebook and Instagram accounts.
Each reviewer handles upward of 600 complaints a day, which gives them less than a minute per case. Reviewers can either do nothing, place the user on “watch” for further scrutiny or ban the account.
ProPublica said 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.
Thanks for the update.