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WhatsApp witnessed an embarrassing violation of privacy just days after its new policy, which obliges users to share their data with Facebook, as its chat groups were indexed on the Google search engine.
The breach of privacy was reported on Sunday by inviting links to private WhatsApp groups, as well as some user profiles that were indexed by Google and appeared in search results, which basically means that anyone was able to join the chats, which Presumably safe, see related chats and phone numbers.
The problem was immediately addressed by WhatsApp, and the exposed links have now vanished from search results. The issue appeared to be similar to the breach in chats and user information privacy, which I reported in early 2020.
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In its statement about the hack, it insisted that app security had improved significantly since the leak last year, and suggested that users themselves were responsible for the weekend’s spread.
Gadgets 360 was told: “Since March 2020, WhatsApp has included the ‘noindex’ tag on all internal link pages, which, according to Google, will exclude it from being indexed,” while urging users not to post invite links anywhere they can be reached. Mechanism in general, to keep it away from search engines.
This incident comes days after the launch of “WhatsApp” of its controversial new policy, which obliges users to share their private data with the parent company “Facebook”, or leave the platform if they do not agree.
The company said the information collected will be used “to help operate, provide, improve, understand, customize, support and market our services.” It acknowledged that it monitors user content to “fight spam, threats, abuse, or infringing activities” and “improve” the WhatsApp experience.
The controversial rules led to a massive exodus of users from the messaging program, as its competitors Telegram and Signal enjoyed a massive surge in popularity.
Source: RT
