WhatsApp, the app which is probably the most used app on the Smartphones of current generation, might just not be as safe as being contested by the company. According to famous iOS researcher Jonathan Zdziarski, he has concrete proof that the popular messenger is retaining the deleted messages of its users.
WhatsApp’s move to go for end-to-end encryption earned itself a lot of eyeballs across the globe. While some were in favour, others were concerned about privacy and security issues. The end-to-end encryption feature makes sure that WhatsApp message remain private when traveling between devices. While WhatsApp doesn’t says that it has self-destructing messages, but it does claim that all the deleted messages are permanently deleted from the user’s phone.
Revealing the glitch in a recent blogpost, Zdziarski said that the latest version of WhatsApp leaves forensic trace of all the chats, even after one has deleted, cleared, or archived them. The case remains the same even if the user opts for the “Clear All Chats” option. On a sarcastic note, he even mentioned that the only way a user can get completely rid of the deleted WhatsApp messages is by deleting the App itself.
Zdziarski even mentions that this particular thing might not be an intentional move by the popular messenger platform but just a mere glitch it happened to overlook.
Explaining how this particular piece of information affects WhatsApp users, he said, his discovery means even if one user deletes a particular message from his device, the forensic information of the deleted message still remains on the user’s phone, and can be easily recovered and reconstructed back to its original form. This would in particular be worrisome if you misplace your smartphone somehow and someone tries to restore your WhatsApp messages.
The iOS researcher even mentions that such a thing is not something new to the iPhone applications. He even asks the users to consider the trails of data a mobile application leaves behind. According to him, iMessage by iPhone also has the exact same problem and is spread across every device that a user might have used to access their messages.
It’s now time to see how WhatsApp responds to Zdziarski’s claims. According to TechiExpert, if his claims really are true, then WhatsApp needs to really take charge and provide it’s customers what it promised.