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WhatsApp privacy issues have resurfaced after search engines discovered that users’ phone numbers and messages were indexed.
Cybersecurity researcher Rajshekhar Rajaharia tweeted that WhatsApp Web users’ data was being indexed on Google again, noting that this was the third time the issue had occurred.
When information is indexed, it can be found in a search engine and made public. As such, companies generally take steps to prevent private data from being indexed.
January 15, 2021, if you are using @WhatsApp Web, your mobile number and messages are being indexed by @Google again. I don’t know why WhatsApp still doesn’t monitor their website and Google. This is the third time.#Infosec #Privacy #infosecurity #GDPR #WhatsApp #Privacy #Politics #Google pic.twitter.com/D6o1emxDgv
– Rajshekhar Rajaharia (@rajaharia) January 15, 2021
He had pointed out a similar issue on January 11, where user profiles and invitations to join group chats were exposed on Google, allowing strangers to potentially find users’ phone numbers or even join ones. chats.
WhatsApp responded by removing group invites and profile links from Google search.
It also issued a statement to the technology website Gadgets360, saying that it had included the “noindex” tag on all deep linking pages (a type of link that sends users directly to an application), which should exclude them from being indexed. .
“We have given our comments to Google so that it does not index these chats. As a reminder, every time someone joins a group, everyone in that group receives a notice and the administrator can revoke or change the group invite link at any time, “added the spokesperson.
Regarding the latest leak, Rajshekhar noted that WhatsApp was using a “Robots.txt” file and a “do not allow all” setting, to tell Google not to index anything.
Although a Robots.txt, or robot exclusion protocol, is generally used to tell web crawlers (which index pages) to stay away, Google was still indexing WhatsApp user data.
Rajshekhar explained why this kept happening: Google requires page owners to not use Robots.txt when using the “noindex” tag, as stated on their search indexing help page.
This is because the functions conflict and Google cannot detect the “noindex” tag if Robot.txt stops it.
At the time of publishing, WhatsApp has not responded to Rajshekhar on how it would solve the latest issue.
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