Are Your WhatsApp Chats Safe? - Here's All You Need To Know

Social media networking platform WhatsApp said that its messages are protected and no third party can access them.

The platform's assertion came amid speculation about how the Narcotics Control Bureau managed to access old messages of celebrities during its investigation into the Bollywood drug angle, an offshoot of the Sushant Singh Rajput case.

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The investigation of actor Sushant's death had initially led to the 'leaking' of some WhatsApp chats of Rhea Chakroborty, and now the conversation between Deepika Padukone and her manager Karishma Prakash on the messaging platform is doing rounds on the internet.

Amid the Bollywood's alleged 'drug abuse' row, a question that repeatedly arises is -- Are your WhatsApp messages safe?

A WhatsApp spokesperson, on Thursday, clarified, "WhatsApp protects your messages with end-to-end encryption so that only you and the person you're communicating with can read what is sent, and nobody in between can access it, not even WhatsApp. It's important to remember that people sign up on WhatsApp using only a phone number, and WhatsApp doesn't have access to your contents of your chats."

Ideally, one can access a user's WhatsApp chats if they physically get their phone or screenshot the chats and share it with others as WhatsApp says all the chats on its app are secured by encryption.

Does WhatsApp store your messages?

WhatsApp in its official blog post notes that it "does not store messages once they are delivered or transaction logs of such delivered messages and undelivered messages are deleted from our servers after 30 days."

If the messages are not stored on WhatsApp's server, then how can someone retrieve these encrypted chats?

Experts say that investigative agencies can take a user¡¯s phone and create a clone of it on another device and then make a mirror image of the phone and transfer all the data of the phone like call recordings, messages, videos, images and even WhatsApp chats. Moreover, they can copy the content from Google Drive or iCloud, which includes data that is even deleted from the user's phone.

Can your WhatsApp chats be accessed?

"WhatsApp follows guidance provided by operating system manufacturers for on-device storage and we encourage people to take advantage of all the security features provided by operating systems such as strong passwords or biometric IDs to prevent third parties from accessing content stored on device," the spokesperson added. It is believed that WhatsApp users mostly back up their chats on Google Drive or iCloud.

So, the messages between Deepika and Karishma may also have been stored on any of the cloud services and accessed similarly.

Can WhatsApp officially share your data?

As per its Security and Privacy policy, the messaging platform follows some operational guidelines for law enforcement officials seeking records from them. "WhatsApp is prepared to carefully review, validate and respond to law enforcement requests based on applicable law and policy," says WhatsApp in its Security and Privacy policy.

"Users seeking information on their own accounts can access WhatsApp's Request Account Info feature. This information may change at any time," adds WhatsApp.