Elon Musk and WhatsApp boss clash over Messenger data protection
WhatsApp would export user data every night, says Musk. The head of the messenger company disagrees, but it's about more than Meta's access to messages.
(Image: Koshiro K/Shutterstock.com)
After Elon Musk claimed that WhatsApp would export user data every night, the head of the messenger has rejected this as incorrect. According to Will Cathcart, Head of WhatsApp at Meta, messages are encrypted and not transmitted to Meta at night. However, Musk did not refer specifically to messages, but merely spoke somewhat vaguely about user data. This could still be valuable for analysis by Meta.
Some security researchers agree with Musk, as user data is more than just messages, which have been encrypted on WhatsApp for years and can therefore only be read by the users themselves. This data protection is also vehemently defended by WhatsApp and Cathcart themselves. WhatsApp, Signal, Threema and Co. have spoken out against the Online Safety Bill on chat control, which would allow the British government to search private messages. This represents a threat to privacy.
Dispute over exported user data
However, Elon Musk is already convinced that WhatsApp is no longer secure if user data is regularly exported. Will Cathcart counters this with his reference to the encryption of messages, but user data also includes metadata such as location, conversation partners and times. Meta uses this data for personalized advertising across all Meta services and confirms this in its own privacy policy, writes security researcher Mysk at X, formerly Twitter.
The sharing of WhatsApp's data with other companies belonging to Meta is a cause for concern, according to Dr. Tristan Henderson, a lecturer in computer science at the University of St. Andrews. "This includes enough metadata for these Meta companies to make suggestions and show personalized ads, which in itself shows what metadata can reveal."
Meta's AI boss gets personal
Even though Will Cathcart emphasizes that Elon Musk is not the first to claim that user data is exported every night, the billionaire has clearly struck a nerve with WhatsApp. While the WhatsApp boss remains objective, Yann LeCun, Head of AI at Meta, follows up with personal criticism of Musk. However, he uses Threads, another Meta platform that Musk does not use himself.
LeCun accuses Musk of making contradictory and unrealistic claims about artificial intelligence and of "spreading conspiracy theories" on his own social media platform, writes the BBC.
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