In the middle of the climbing of the active conflict between Israel and Iran, the latter gave another directive to its residents, which involving the popular WhatsApp messaging platform.
Iran has asked its population, via state television, to remove WhatsApp due to security and confidentiality problems.
Here’s what you need to know about the country’s directive.
Why did Iran ask its residents to delete WhatsApp?
Iranian state television urged residents on Tuesday afternoon to delete WhatsApp from their smartphones, due to the concerns that the messaging platform collects user information to share with Israel.
It is understood that residents have been encouraged to refrain from using other “localization -based applications”.
The television report has provided no evidence to support claims related to privacy.
How did WhatsApp respond to claims?
A WhatsApp spokesperson said on Wednesday morning on time that the Méta-Aparparue messaging platform was concerned about reports from Iranian state television.
“We fear that these false reports are an excuse so that our services are blocked at a time when people need it most,” said the statement sent by e-mail. “All the messages you send to family and friends on WhatsApp are encrypted from start to finish. We do not follow your precise location, we do not hold any people from who everyone sends a message, and we do not follow the personal messages that people send each other. We do not provide loose information to any government.”
The publicly shared information of WhatsApp claim that his “end -to -end encryption” effectively “locks” cats between individuals, and that no one, including WhatsApp, can access these messages.
A WhatsApp official said that at least 90 users were targeted in more than two dozen countries by “zero click piracy”, which uses a malicious electronic document to compromise an account without any user interaction themselves.
It was not clear who was behind the incident or which of Paragon customers could have ordered the attack.
In May, the NSO group – the Israeli company that developed the PEGASUS spy software – was ordered to pay WhatsApp 167 million dollars on a hacking campaign which targeted 1,400 users in 2019. META called the “An important step for the confidentiality and security of all”.
Meta said WhatsApp was not the only target of attacks, and that Pegasus “had many other methods for installing spy software to exploit technologies from other companies to manipulate people’s devices by downloading malware and compromising their phones.”
