[ad_1]
Just days after rolling out its new policy requiring users to share their data with Facebook, WhatsApp suffered an embarrassing privacy breach, with its private discussion groups indexed on Google’s search engine.
The privacy breach was reported on Sunday. Invitation links to private WhatsApp messaging groups as well as some user profiles were indexed by Google and appeared in search results, which essentially means anyone could join supposedly secure chats and see to both chats and associated phone numbers.
The issue was quickly fixed by WhatsApp and the exposed links are now gone from search results. The issue appears to have been similar to a chat and user information privacy breach reported in early 2020.
In the company’s statement regarding the breach, it insisted that the app’s security had improved significantly since the leak last year, and implicated that the users themselves were responsible for the Google overflow. of the weekend.
Also on rt.com
Why doesn’t Facebook just buy your data if it’s so valuable? RT’s Boom Bust Digs Into WhatsApp Privacy Controversy
“As of March 2020, WhatsApp has included the ‘noindex’ tag on all deep linking pages, which Google says will exclude them from indexing,” he told Gadgets 360 oultet, urging users not to post invite links in publicly accessible places to keep them away from search engines.
Like all content shared in searchable public channels, invitation links posted publicly on the internet can be found by other WhatsApp users. Links that users wish to share privately with people they know and trust should not be posted on a publicly accessible website.
The incident comes days after WhatsApp rolled out its highly controversial new policy requiring users to share their private data with its parent company, Facebook, or quit the platform if they did not consent. The company said the information collected would be used to “Helping to operate, provide, improve, understand, personalize, support and market our services.” He acknowledged that he monitors user content for “Fight against spam, threats, abuse or counterfeit activities” and “improve” the WhatsApp experience.
Also on rt.com
Facebook forces WhatsApp users to share their personal data … or leave the platform
The controversial rules have sparked a massive exodus of messenger users, with rivals – Telegram, as well as Signal – enjoying a sizeable spike in popularity.
Do you think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
[ad_2]
Source link