WhatsApp Chats Are Available To Anyone Via Google
WhatsApp group chats can be easily found via a Google search, because the search engine is indexing links to conversations intended to be private. SOPA IMAGES/LIGHTROCKET VIA GETTY IMAGES
WhatsApp Chats Are Available To Anyone Via Google
People use WhatsApp to chat to their friends and family because it’s easy to use and private. But the encrypted app might not be as private as you think.
WhatsApp group chats can be easily found via a Google search, because the search engine is indexing links to conversations intended to be private.
All it takes is a quick Google search and anyone can join a range of WhatsApp chats, including those meant to be private, according to esteemed tech site Vice which first broke the story.
Private WhatsApp conversations are usually only accessible via an invite code handed out to group members by the chat moderator. But this code is simply a string of text and a URL, and it seems that at least some of these are being indexed so they are findable by anyone via Google.
You can see if any of your private chats are visible by typing in chat.whatsapp.com and then adding in some detail relating to the group chat.
What happened?
On Twitter yesterday (February 21), a multimedia journalist for the German outlet Deutsche Welle, Jordan Wildon issued a warning: “Your WhatsApp groups may not be as secure as you think they are.”
He detailed how the “Invite to Group via Link” feature “allows groups to be indexed by Google” and “they are generally available across the internet.”
In other words, Wildon explained: “Any group link that is shared it outside of secure, private messaging can relatively easily be found and joined.”
And it gets worse: even if you haven’t shared the link, he said “it’s possible, but difficult, to run a kind of brute-force method to get access to a URL that corresponds to an active group chat.”
