A new press investigation revealed control mechanisms used by Facebook to operate the WhatsApp application, in violation of the promises of its president, Mark Zuckerberg, regarding the privacy of users of this application.
Zuckerberg said in a speech to the Senate in 2018 “We don’t see any of the content on WhatsApp” App operators always stress this policy, as when sending messages through it, a sign appears that says “No one outside this group can read or listen to this message.”
However, an investigation conducted by ProPublica, based in New York, based on documents, data and interviews with dozens of current and former employees of the company and its contractors, concluded that WhatsApp is less private than many of its two billion users believe.
This is the first investigation of its kind that reveals the details and ability of WhatsApp operators to examine messages and user data and examines how they use this information.
The site warned that since its acquisition of WhatsApp in 2014, Facebook has silently undermined the comprehensive security guarantees of the app’s users in various ways.
ProPublica indicated that Facebook’s privacy policies towards WhatsApp differ significantly from what it practices in operating the Facebook site and the Instagram application, and it calls for concrete questions because the company has disclosed only a few details about it.
The site’s report revealed that a person who requested anonymity filed a complaint last year with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in which he lied Facebook’s statements about WhatsApp privacy, and admitted that the operators of this application widely used third-party contractors, artificial intelligence systems and account data to examine messages, photos and videos shared by users of the application.
The commission has not taken any public steps on this reporting complaint, while WhatsApp has insisted that it is not aware of it.