Beware of other chat apps, warn cyber experts
|Published
FILE PHOTO: A man poses with a smartphone in front of displayed Whatsapp logo in this illustration September 14, 2017. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/File Photo
With millions of WhatsApp users reportedly flocking to other messaging applications after the chat app’s controversial privacy policy update, cyber experts in the country have warned of the risks of using other chat services.
Many people have switched to chat applications such as Telegram, as WhatsApp announced its new terms of service which included a clause that allows Facebook to share data from WhatsApp across its other products.
The updated policy, which has been delayed for the time being, revealed that Facebook would have access to users’ phone numbers, their contacts’ phone numbers, profile names, and pictures, and status messages including “last online” time.
Telegram downloads topped the Google Play Store rankings since WhatsApp tried to force its users to agree to its updated terms and privacy policies to continue using the app.
However cyber experts have warned against the risks of using chat apps such as Telegram. In particular, Telegram does not have end-to-end encryption enabled by default, which WhatsApp does.
This means that unless you manually start a “secret chat”, which uses Telegram’s own proprietary encryption protocol, your messages could be visible to Telegram and accessed by others if they are intercepted.
Anna Collard, SVP content strategy and evangelist at KnowBe4 Africa, says there are always risks associated with using any chat application.
“Ultimately, we need to remind ourselves that companies are there to make money,” says Collard. And if we don’t pay for the application or service they offer, then we will, at some point, have to trade something for it. That could be our personal information or in-app advertising.
“Telegram Inc is a company, so at some point they will have to commercialise their product, just like Facebook is doing with WhatsApp.
“Additionally, Telegram’s chats are not end-to-end encrypted by default. People should use the ’Secret Chat’ feature so that they have a fully end-to-end encrypted chat.”
Collard says the messaging app Signal has proved to be one of the safest chat apps on the market.
“Signal, on the other hand, is an app controlled and developed by the Signal Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit and they are in fact the developers of the open-source Signal Protocol that WhatsApp bases it’s encryption on. All Signal collects from us is our phone number.”
Clive Conlon, a response engineer at Nclose, agrees with Collard that there are always risks associated with any chat application.
“All platforms have their positives and negatives,” says Conlon.
“Telegram allows for anyone to access public groups and is also used by criminal entities to distribute illegal content and goods.
“Signal and WhatsApp use the same end-to-end encryption method; however, Signal does not collect metadata.
“It is important to first study the terms of service of any messaging app you would like to join,” says Conlon. “Most of them are relatively similar with minor differences such as metadata collection.”
With millions of people scrambling to change chat applications after WhatsApps’s new terms of services, Conlon says South Africans should also be mindful of other chat apps and social media apps they are using.
“WhatsApp’s metadata collection is not really a problem as this helps to improve the product, but people's main concerns are around sharing this metadata with parent company Facebook.
“I am of the opinion that if you have any concerns at how WhatsApp processes your metadata, first look at how you use your other platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok and services such as Google’s ecosystem as some of these companies collect way more data that you should be concerned about.
“As WhatsApp does not collect any personal identifiable information (PII), if they stick to their terms of service, I believe there is no more of a risk to using WhatsApp than Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or any other social media platforms for adults and children.”
“Parents should always monitor children’s phones from time to time for any activity over and above WhatsApp, especially younger teens/kids who might not be aware of the dangers of their mobile device yet.”
WhatsApp’s new terms of services will allow the messaging service to collect information such as your phone number, the IP addresses you’ve used, the brand and type of your phone (or another device), your profile picture, the phone numbers of your contacts, all WhatsApp groups you’re a member of, as well as blocked contacts.
However, due to end-to-end encryption, neither WhatsApp nor Facebook will be able to read your chats.
“This is also not going to change after accepting their new privacy policy. However, what they can do – and are quite transparent in their new proposed privacy policy – is share metadata with the rest of the Facebook group of companies.
“This includes details on who we are communicating with and when, for how long, the frequency and duration of our activities as well as location data from our device. This is not really anything new, but they are also proposing that their data collection will include ’identifiers unique to Facebook company products associated with the same device or account’.
“This is cause for concern, because it effectively means all of our data linked to one phone using Facebook applications (WhatsApp, Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, Oculus and so on) will be collected and correlated.