AFTER FACEBOOK
CAN WE TRUST WhatsApp?
THE MONSTERS AT OUR BACK
What if you come to know that your private video that you had sent to your loved ones on such app is seen by others also? How would you react if you get a tip-off about your bank passwords and details getting cascaded non-legitimately? Have you ever imagined your bank opening your locker and selling off your valuables? Can information be commodified and sold to interested marketers or political parties? Of course it can. It’s already happening across the board. Now, a probable question is, is WhatsApp doing the same? Let’s, go into that.
From personal love–chit chats to a seriously vulnerable bank details, the ATM pins to property papers and PAN cards to passports (as a proof of our residence to book a gas connection), from personal photos and videos to that of the very crucial business plannings and strategies, sharing all our secret data on social networking platforms like Whatsapp, never realizing that these data may not remain as secret as we believe, have become an integral part of our everyday lives! With this our whole lives are on this digital mammoth, WhatsApp!
So, how safe it is on WhatsApp?
Can anybody hook binoculars into the millions of conversations happening every day and scan what so many users are saying, feeling and sharing? Scared? Get a peep into the havoc with THE CAPITAL POST’s exclusive.
Well, Facebook already stands exposed. In the biggest “breach” on the internet, Canadian whistleblower Christopher Wylie revealed that his former firm Cambridge Analytica used data from 87 million Facebook accounts-including that of its top boss Mark Zuckerberg. Over 5 million Indians were also affected by the breach! So, what’s the safeguard that the Facebook–owned WhatsApp won’t do the same? The messenger service is already prone to its own leaks, and reports suggest that WhatsApp had close to 200 million active users from India in Feb 2017, a number Mark Zuckerberg also confirms. This is a tenfold increase from 2013 when it started to become popular in India.
LETTING THE WORLD SEE YOU
WhatsApp, which has one billion users globally, is one of the most popular mediums of instant messaging in India and with this has ruled–out the conventional text messaging services. It was acquired by Facebook in 2014. But why it is making us all go in worry? Here we tell you. WhatsApp has admitted that it is sharing information about identity and device information with Facebook, allowing it to do the dirty work in snooping on users.
“One-to-one communications between users are encrypted and may be as secure as WhatsApp claims. But, the metadata, information about the calls, is likely being mined by the company,” Vivek Wadhwa, a top American technology entrepreneur and academic opines.
“What is the most worrisome fact is that WhatsApp’s group chat feature allows any group member to mine data like Cambridge Analytica, and what is worse, they reveal mobile numbers. So, people can be harassed off the platform also,” as asserted by Wadhwa.
“GROUP CHATTERS”–BE AWARE!
If researchers are to be believed, the group chat feature of WhatsApp puts users at greater threat than their postings on Facebook because of the availability of mobile phone numbers. “WhatsApp users take the company at its word that ‘Privacy and Security is in our DNA’. It clearly isn’t. There are major design flaws in its chat features, as researchers allege. People can be added to groups via public links or directly by an administrator. Even though the group gives a notification of a new member, they may only have a phone number or name and not know who they are. Any member can record conversations from the time they enter the group. They have the phone numbers of people making comments.
Thus, WhatsApp is being two-faced. To Facebook, it provides sensitive device information. To the authorities, it claims that it can’t decrypt conversations. Noting that almost one-quarter or more of the world’s population is using WhatApp for free – services that cost the company money for paying for its employees, plants and IPRs production, eminent New York-based attorney Ravi Batra said that it makes money by harvesting user data and using it in conjunction with others including Facebook.
NOW BLACKLISTED!
WhatsApp is among the most blacklisted apps in the enterprise! WhatsApp Messenger, WinZip, and Where’s My Droid Pro have made the list for the most blacklisted iOS and Android apps in enterprise environments. According to the Enterprise Mobile Security Pulse Report, Q3 2017 of Appthority, a pioneer data firm that enables customers to secure their data from mobile device and applications, WhatsApp Messenger, Pokémon GO, and WinZip were the top blacklisted apps for iOS, together with CamScanner.
YOU ARE EXPOSED TO HACKERS!
Arun and his family had joined a WhatsApp group which eventually became much larger over time. All was well until he found his children were being contacted by strangers because of what was discussed in that group!
Now, many of us like Arun might be encountering such problems. Infact, investigations have indicated that a “severe” security problem with WhatsApp could have left “hundreds of millions” of accounts vulnerable to hackers, according to researchers that discovered a flaw in the app. The bug, which affected the web version of the messaging app, would have allowed people with technical knowledge to take over users’ accounts with a simple message.
“Clicking and opening a malicious file could have let hackers see victims’ conversations, photos, videos, contacts, shared files and more”–Security Researchers
“Attackers could potentially download your photos and or post them online, send messages on your behalf, demand ransom and even take over your friends’ accounts”– Security Researchers
The flaw was discovered in the end-to-end encryption WhatsApp uses. Your favorite encrypted messaging app Telegram also lies in the same loop!
STOP USING WhatsApp Pay!
After the “digital India” initiative, many of us might be using WhatsApp Pay as one of the comfy digital mediums for fast track payments. But did you know, Facebook had recently given Indian fintech experts 50 million reasons to doubt the safety of its ongoing experiment in India. The social media giant is caught in the middle of a data breach controversy. It allegedly shared data of up to 50 million users with a political data analytics company Cambridge Analytica. The data was allegedly used to tilt the results of US elections in favor of Donald Trump. Yes! That happened!
India’s industry experts as well as fintech firms are voicing their reservations around such company getting access to financial data via WhatsApp. Many believe that these firms should be regulated as well as held accountable. The National Payments Corporation of India (NCPI) had given its consent for the roll-out of WhatsApp BHIM Unified Payments Interface (UPI) beta with limited user base of one million users and low per transaction limit.
“We should be extremely concerned and vigilant that such a company is getting access to India’s banking systems”–Paytm’s Founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma
CHINESE CHECKERS OF THE WEB!
It is interesting to know that China, who is the world’s most populated country, a no. ahead from us, has banned all popular apps and social media sites. Not only this but, its people are given local equivalents that are popular as well as thriving and are also claimed safe!
It was around late September last year, the Chinese government blocked WhatsApp messenger from being used in the country’s mainland. This was the last big social media app to be banned by the regime in Beijing. Following a strict internet censorship, China has also banned other social media apps like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, Snapchat, Word Press, Picasa, Flicker, Google Hangouts and many more as early as before 2010. Even Google Play along with other Google services as common as Google search and You Tube are banned!
The country has, thus, successfully created its own ecosystem featuring websites, social networks and apps that are counterparts of popular global web services. China’s Twitter equivalent is an app called Weibo, Baidu for Google search, Wechat which is a messenger service, and Youku which is more or less like You Tube.
RULE OF THE “KNOW-ALLS”
Our hyperlinked world, undoubtedly, endangers our privacy and dignity as a few know everything what the rest are doing! Besides, India is a good place to begin with new money transfer apps and such social media bizarre as we have no privacy law and data protection framework!
There is an old saying; there is no “free lunch”. Yet, there is a new brave digital world – that is free to use! And how free it actually is? There shall be no surprise in knowing that the costs and profit of providing these free services must come from ‘mining’! Minning what? The habits and data connected to each User!
Each human being is only born with a unique finger print, or other genetic material. But, how a human being lives, works and plays – each step and act – is as unique as that fingerprint. That is why it’s so profitable to mine user data, so those who wish to sell anything to a user know what the user will want, when s/he will want it – maybe even before the user does!
This is how severe the threat is!