As a result, safeguarding your conversations on this platform requires some measures. Continue reading to understand the essential aspects that give insight into how safe WhatsApp is.
WhatsApp is a popular target for scammers and hackers because of its vulnerability.
Meta’s WhatsApp messaging platform is among the most widely used chat applications on a global scale. An approximate count of two billion individuals use this service, sending roughly 100 billion messages each day.
To ensure a secure and spam-free experience on WhatsApp, it’s important to be aware of potential security threats and risks from malware. Please familiarize yourself with common scams to confidently evaluate their safety before taking action.
Fake News
Social media companies have faced criticism over the dissemination of false information and misinformation on their platforms.
Meta, in particular, received pushback for its involvement in spreading untrue facts during the 2020 Presidential campaign season in the United States. WhatsApp also encountered comparable reproach.
Two significant incidents involving WhatsApp have occurred in India and Brazil. In 2017 and 2018, the Indian population witnessed extensive violence resulting from the use of this instant messaging app.
The platform was used to spread fake news regarding child abductions that contained local details customized for each region before being shared multiple times among people’s contact lists.
Despite attempts to combat it, false information concerning COVID-19 was distributed through WhatsApp at the beginning of the pandemic.
Meta reacted by imposing forwarding limitations to diminish the spread of misleading or dishonest data. Furthermore, they partnered with various health groups and governments worldwide to establish a system of WhatsApp chatbots that offered reliable news on all topics relating to this global crisis for convenient use by individuals.
Status Privacy
WhatsApp users could only use the status feature to share what they were up to through a short line of text. However, this later evolved into WhatsApp Status, which emulated Instagram’s widely used Stories attribute.
Although you have the option to make your Instagram profile private, it is primarily intended for public use.
Conversely, WhatsApp caters more to personal connections and communication with loved ones. As a result, one might assume that posting a Status on WhatsApp is also confined within the realm of privacy.
That’s not true. Your WhatsApp Status can be viewed by anyone in your contacts list. But don’t worry, it’s easy to manage who gets access to your updates.
Simply go to Settings > Privacy > Status (or on Android devices tap the three-dot menu at the top right corner and select Settings > Privacy> Status) where you’ll find three privacy options for controlling your shared status information:
The individuals in my contact list are excluded. Share the content exclusively with them. Make sure to select the appropriate option. Similar to Instagram Stories, images and videos posted on your Status will vanish within 24 hours.
Job Scams
It is quite common to encounter online job scams, which has also led fraudsters to utilize WhatsApp as a platform for sharing such fraudulent opportunities.
This could clarify why you may receive recruitment messages via this messaging application.
Impersonating a recruitment agency or recruiter is not uncommon, and the sender often chooses to masquerade as prestigious organizations such as Microsoft, UNICEF, or the World Health Organization.
In WhatsApp job scams, the perpetrator sends a hyperlink along with a short explanation.
These fraudulent employment opportunities utilize attractive salaries as enticement and often require an advance payment from the recipient to guarantee placement.
If you make this transfer of funds, you will never receive communication from these counterfeit recruiters again.
Backups without encryption
Your WhatsApp messages have end-to-end encryption, ensuring that only your and the recipient’s devices can decode them.
This added feature mitigates interception during transmission by entities like Meta but does not maintain message security once decrypted on your device.
On both Android (Google Drive) and iOS (iCloud), WhatsApp provides an option for backing up your messages and media.
This feature proves to be crucial in recovering unintentionally deleted chats on the messaging app. What’s more, apart from a local backup system present within the device, there is also cloud-based support available that contains decrypted chat history data maintained across devices.
The backup file that is saved on iCloud or Google Drive may not have encryption.
This implies that the decrypted versions of all your messages in this file could be theoretically vulnerable, weakening WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption protection.
Since you don’t have the option to choose a backup location, your data’s safety is entirely reliant on cloud providers. Moreover, there exist other methods that cyber attackers may utilize to infiltrate your cloud storage accounts.
Fortunately, WhatsApp has introduced end-to-end encrypted chat backups in its latest service update. Unfortunately, this feature is not enabled by default.
To ensure the security of your WhatsApp backups, navigate to Settings > Chats > Chat Backup > End-to-End Encrypted Backup and activate Turn On.
Additionally, you must create a password to safeguard your saved data; however, it’s essential to note that if you forget it, access will be restricted as there is no option for retrieval from WhatsApp itself.
Web Malware
Is WhatsApp safe? Due to its vast number of users, WhatsApp is a prime target for cybercriminals who direct their attention towards both the web and desktop versions of the app.
The regulation of app stores on phones, i.e. the iOS App Store and Android’s Google Play Store is more meticulous than that of the wider Internet.
While searching for WhatsApp in these stores, it becomes evident which one is its official version; however, such clarity cannot be expected when accessing the internet at large.
This opportunity has been exploited by criminals, hackers, and scammers alike. They have impersonated WhatsApp desktop applications using malicious software resulting in cases of malware distribution or computer compromise upon installation for unsuspecting users.
Download Whatsapp for Android and iOS.
Conclusion
Is WhatsApp a safe platform to use? The messaging app can be confusing in terms of security.
While it does offer end-to-end encryption, one of the most reliable measures around, there still exist several concerns regarding WhatsApp’s overall safety.
The chief concern is that WhatsApp remains under Meta’s ownership and is susceptible to similar privacy threats and dissemination of false information as its parent company.
Ultimately, whether or not one considers WhatsApp safe hinges on personal judgment after considering the aforementioned points.
