WhatsApp rose to fame because of its end-to-end encryption feature, but after Facebook aquired it in 2014 many disputed happend saying that FB mgiht be using its data for ad-tracking. And addresing the same thing, ProPublica revealed that messages on WhatsApp, the world’s most popular mobile messenger app with over two billion monthly active users, can be read by its moderator having no regard for users privacy and safety.
However, the company has addresed this burnng issue through an application, stating that FB or anyone (expect the sender and reciver) can’t read messages on the platform.
End-to-end encryption means that message is coded until it reaches its recipient, how the company works in general. But as per ProPublica, when the user flags or reports a message (even if it’s in a private chat), the algorithm scan for suspicious behavior, and forward it, along with four previous messages plus any images or videos, to a real human (moderators) for evaluation.
Facebook, the parent company of WhatsApp, has reortedly around 1,000 contract workers called ‘Moderators,’ who keep an eye on the reported messages. And as per ProPublica they check whether that message contains spam, hate speech, potential terrorist threats and misinformation, blackmail, and sexually oriented business.
According to research, the user can either be blocked, added to the watchlist, or disabled, but the actual message decoded can be viewed along with other enterprising details of the user such as the user’s unique id, phone number, and user’s status messages.
Recently a WhatsApp spokeswoman in response to a report that,
“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.”messages are contradictory to the end-to-end encryption policy”.
ProPublica reports that all of these activities are in the user’s privacy policy. Users need to go through it to find them. Moreover, unflagged messages are highly encrypted and we have seen that there is a big push from big tech giants (including FB) to develop an AI that can extract information even from the encrypted messages.
All in all you just can’t trust anybody (especally famous comapnies) in this world anymore.
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