Facebook has been assuring that no one can read the content of whatsapp messages because they are protected by end-to-end encryption. An affirmation from which the company has made a flag during its latest crises that an investigation has questioned in question when it has specific workers to review individual contents of conversations.
Research carried out by Propubica is based on data, documents and dozens of interviews with employees and subcontracted, both current and ancient, and even a confidential complaint filed by the United States Stock Exchange Committee, in which it is ensured that Privacy affirmations made by Facebook about whatsapp are false, and that there are workers who use specific programs to access user messages.
According to the news agency, whatsapp has at least a thousand subcontracted workers in their offices in Austin, Texas (United States), Dublin (Ireland) and Singapore, who examine millions of content shared by users through the week. Your messaging service.
The messages are private, as the technological company ensures its website, as they are protected by end-to-end encryption, which prevents anyone from the issuer and receiver to know the content of the conversations.
However, these subcontracted workers use special Facebook software to analyze messages and other shared content in the chats that other users have denounced for violating the polication policies, and are examined by an artificial intelligence system. In this way, when a message is "denounced" the subcontracted workers are able to access the content of it.
Subsequently, they must make a trial about that content, although they can not eliminate individual content, as it happens on Facebook and Instagram platforms. With this moderation - which do not refer as such in whatsapp-, workers review messages to identify and eliminate "the workers abusers", as the company's communication director, Carl Woog, a Propubica, without To clarify whether they were aware of the competent authorities their findings.
This message has been reiterated by a spokesman for the company in statements to the Europa Press news agency in Spain.
"WhatsApp provides a way for people to denounce 'spam' or abuse, which includes sharing the latest messages in a chat. This function is important to prevent the worst abuses on the Internet. We are totally disagreing with the idea that you accept The reports that a user decides to send us is incompatible with end-to-end encryption, "he expressed.
Facebook acquired the WhatsApp Messaging Service in 2014 and two years later incorporated end-to-end encryption. In 2019, the Executive Director Mark Zuckerberg shared his intention to extend this protection to his other communication services, Instagram and Messenger. A year earlier he had assured the United States Senate that the company did not see anything about whatsapp content.
A statement that, demonstrated false, could assume the commission of a crime by Mark Zuckerberg.
At present, only whatsapp has this encryption, and is, in addition, the only service of which periodic transparency reports are not offered, in which the company details the actions carried out against content not allowed on Facebook or Instagram.
The investigation also includes the scope of user data that the company shares with the police authorities when required. Propubica points out that whatsapp shares metadata with the authorities, non-encrypted records that can end up revealing the activity of a user.
Date Of Update: 22 September 2021, 01:36
