According to computer security researcher Rajshekhar Rajaharia, there is a security vulnerability currently affecting the web version of WhatsApp. For some reason, Google can index user numbers and messages on its search engine. As the researcher remembers, this is the third time personal data has been found on Google.
Remember, another scandal hit WhatsApp in June 2020. Due to a bug related to the Contact Card Sharing feature, the mobile phone numbers of WhatsApp users were indexed on Google. This issue affected thousands of users around the world, including the French.
However, according to computer researcher Rajshekhar Rajaharian, WhatsApp is the victim of a bug with the effect of identical results. According to his information, Many phone numbers and messages can be accessed on Google. In a series of tweets, the expert explained that only the web version of WhatsApp appears to be affected by this privacy issue.
No reaction from WhatsApp or Google
According to him, there is a concern on the part of WhatsApp tools that are supposed to prevent data from being indexed by Google. However, the researcher emphasizes that this data should not end up on Google, even in the event of a WhatsApp failure. In fact, he assures us that there is also a bug on the part of Google.
Cherry on the cake WhatsApp does not monitor the data being indexed on the search engine. In other words, this data could remain online for a while without the researcher discovering. At the moment, neither Google nor WhatsApp has officially responded to this issue.
WhatsApp clearly didn’t need that
As a reminder, this new privacy issue arises when WhatsApp has been in a real tide since announcing its new public terms of use. Going forward, the service will be able to share some personal data with Facebook, the parent company.
And although this additional group concerns only your interactions with companies on WhatsApp, these changes were upset by users, who were not really inclined to share more data with Facebook. As a result, thousands of users have migrated en masse to competing apps, with Signal in mind. In order to ease tensions, WhatsApp has postponed the entry into force of these new terms of use until May 15, 2021.
