Google is indexing requests to WhatsApp group chats. While it makes invitation links, including links to private group chats, identifiable and available to anyone who wants to join, Motherboard reports.
Furthermore, the journalist Jordan Wildon said on Twitter that he discovered that the “Invite to group link” feature of WhatsApp allows Google to index groups. Since making them available on the Internet as links are shared outside the secure private messaging service of WhatsApp.
While Motherboard was able to find private groups using specific Google searches (and the results included many groups to share porn). Once they joined a group, aimed at NGOs accredited by the UN, they had access to all participants and their phone numbers.
The Group administrators can invalidate a link to a chat if they wish, but Wildon says he discovered that, in those situations. WhatsApp only generates a new link; It does not necessarily disable the original link. WhatsApp group links come with attached warnings, reminding the person who generates the link only to share it with people you trust.
In addition, Facebook’s WhatsApp spokeswoman Alison Bonny said in an email to The Verge that “like all content that is shared on public search channels, other WhatsApp users can find invitation links that are published on the Internet,” and He added that “links that users wish to share privately with people they know and trust should not be published on a publicly accessible website.”
Whereas Google decayed to provide comments on the record, but Danny Sullivan, the company’s public search link. He also tweeted that “search engines like Google and others list pages on the open web. That’s what is happening here. No is unlike any case where a site allows URLs to be publicly listed. ” It included a link to instructions in the Google Help Center
WhatsApp, of course, has had its share of security-related headaches in recent months. An alleged Saudi Arabian hack on Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’s phone in 2018 was reportedly carried out through a WhatsApp message infected with malware. Last May, a vulnerability discovered in the application was being used to inject spyware into Android and iOS phones through a phone call.
