Remember, another scandal fell on WhatsApp in June 2020. Due to a bug in the contact card sharing feature, the mobile numbers of WhatsApp users have been indexed on Google. This issue has affected thousands of users worldwide, including the French.
But according to computer researcher Rajshekhar Rajaharian, WhatsApp is the victim of a bug with the same consequences. According to the information he received, Several phone numbers and messages are accessible on Google. The expert explains in a series of tweets that only the web version of WhatsApp is affected by this privacy issue.
No response from WhatsApp or Google
According to him, there is a concern on the side of WhatsApp tools that should prevent data from being indexed by Google. Still, the researcher confirms that even in the event of a malfunction in WhatsApp, this data should not go to Google. It even guarantees that there is an error on the part of Google.
Cherries on the cake WhatsApp does not track data indexed in the search engine. In other words, this data may remain online for a while without the discovery of the researcher. For now, neither Google nor WhatsApp have officially reacted to the problem.
January 15, 2021, If using @Whats up The web is indexed by your Mobile Number and Messages @Google Again. I don’t know why WhatsApp still doesn’t monitor websites and google. This is the 3rd time.#infosec #Privacy #information security #GDPR #Whats up #Privacy #Policy #Google pic.twitter.com/D6o1emxDgv
– Rajshekhar Rajaharia (@rajaharia) January 15, 2021
WhatsApp clearly didn’t need it
As a reminder, this new privacy issue comes as WhatsApp has been caught in a real tidal wave since the new terms and conditions of use were announced. Now the service will be able to share certain personal data with its parent company, Facebook.
And even if this additional collection only concerns your purchases with companies on WhatsApp, these changes were very poorly received by users and were not really inclined to share more data with Facebook. As a result, thousands of users have collectively migrated to competing apps, notably Signal. To ease the tension, WhatsApp has delayed the entry into force of these new terms of service to May 15, 2021.
