Encryption A Lie? Facebook Can Read Your WhatsApp Messages, Says Report

Every time Facebook-owned WhatsApp's security protocols are questioned by governments or analysts, the company quickly absolves any responsibility of content shared on its platforms by saying that their end-to-end encryption prevents Facebook from reading any chats.

While that may mostly be true, a new report has shed light on how WhatsApp may be reading our conversations with access to basically everything we say on the platform.

Reuters

WhatsApp End-To-End Encryption A Lie?

In 2018, when US began its initial probe against Facebook, founder Mark Zuckerberg announced in the Senate that all content on WhatsApp is encrypted.

(Un)Shockingly, it seems like the company is lying! A report published by ProPublica lays bare the intricacies of content moderation on WhatsApp - suggesting that the company has moderators for content, that WhatsApp has given metadata to law enforcement agencies, and that Facebook shares user data among its pool of companies.

Essentially, if you report someone's message, Facebook has grounds to read the message, but this goes against its claims of being end-to-end encrypted. If that were true, no message would be accessible by the company.

Since the report came out, ProPublica has posted an official clarification stating - "A previous version of this story caused unintended confusion about the extent to which WhatsApp examines its users¡¯ messages and whether it breaks the encryption that keeps the exchanges secret. We¡¯ve altered language in the story to make clear that the company examines only messages from threads that have been reported by users as possibly abusive. It does not break end-to-end encryption". So while encryption may be safe, Facebook still has access to messages that have been reported by users.

Reuters

Also read: WhatsApp Will Allow Hiding Last Seen, Profile Pic For Specific Contacts

According to ProPublica, 1,000 moderators who are employed by Facebook's contractor Accenture are responsible for reviewing content flagged by Facebook's machine learning framework.

This monitoring group looks at spam, hate speech, terrorism, child abuse, and illegal businesses. Moderators have the ability to ban the content, put a particular user on watch, or to simply do nothing.

How does content reach Facebook moderators?

ProPublica's study found that the AI programme can misidentify content a lot of times.

For instance, images of kids in a bathtub are often misunderstood for being abusive. When these are flagged, moderators can read the last five messages in that thread - essentially dissolving the delusion of any end-to-end encryption.

AFP

This is especially confusing for Indian users, who WhatsApp claimed to be defending when a lawsuit with the government developed. The new Information Technology laws in India demanded WhatsApp to "break" its encryption, but it positioned itself as a protector of user privacy.

Also read: WhatsApp Will Stop Working On These 43 Smartphones From November 2021

In light of these revelations, those mighty claims sound hollow. Facebook also does a good job of hiding what data is shared and stored by the company. While it mentions that in case of reported accounts, recent messages may become viewable to moderators, it does not reveal that such information includes phone numbers, profile images, linked social media accounts, and even the IP address.

ProPublica's investigation found that such details are stored by WhatsApp and Facebook regardless of a user's privacy settings.

Did you think your messages are truly end-to-end encrypted on WhatsApp? Does this information change your perception of Facebook? Let us know in the comments below, and keep reading Indiatimes.com for the latest on Big Tech.

(This story was updated after a WhatsApp spokesperson reached out to Indiatimes)