You certainly don’t need to delete WhatsApp.ĭespite the Meta issue, WhatsApp deserves real credit for democratizing end-to-end encryption and making it readily available cross platform and across the world. But even so, if you’re in a high-risk group or in a high-risk location, then use Signal instead and definitely use a fully encrypted platform and turn off any unencrypted backups from your device. Should you worry about using Telegram? Probably not- it’s seen as a favoured comms tool for elements of the underworld, after all.

And while Telegram has the policies and procedures in place to protect content and to prevent its staff spying on user messages, the lack of end-to-end encryption means there’s no technical impediment as such. We saw this prompt warnings to Russians using Telegram to chat about the Ukraine war. In reality, this is a much bigger issue for a much larger number of users than a patched WhatsApp flaw. The only times this content becomes vulnerable is when it’s decrypted on one of the devices at the ends of those chats, or should you back-up the chat history outside the encryption. Only you and the person or group you are messaging have the decryption keys to decode your content. Simply put, end-to-end encryption secures your content from even the messenger itself. You also need to worry about end-to-end encryption, especially where WhatsApp is concerned, given that it’s owned by Meta, the world’s largest and most successful data harvester- for now.

And that’s why you must NEVER send any verification code texted to your device to any of your friends, regardless of how convincing a sob story they might tell. Thousands of times as many users are hit by this kind of attack as backdoor malware. What you, as a regular WhatsApp user, do need to worry about is common scams that will trick you into giving up access to your account, enabling attackers to target your friends and family for financial gain. WhatsApp hits the mark-especially as it runs cross-platform and so is used by iPhone and Android users alike.

If I want to target politicians or journalists or activists or dissidents, then I want to find an exploit that will almost certainly be installed on their phone. The reason iMessage and WhatsApp and other hyper-scale platforms come under attack is ubiquity.

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