WhatsApp users have been placed on red alert over a worrying chat flaw.
WhatsApp users across the globe have been placed on red alert after the discovery of a glitch that could make certain messages a little less private. The worrying issue is affecting so-called “view once” chats. As the name suggests, these appear on the recipient’s phone but then disappear the minute they have been viewed.
It’s a little like the popular Snapchat app and means users can send private messages to friends and family without fear that they will be saved.
“Once you send a view once photo, video, or voice message, you won’t be able to view it again,” WhatsApp explains on its blog pages.
“Any photos or videos you send won’t be saved to the recipient’s Photos or Gallery.”
To make things even more secure, WhatsApp also confirms that it shouldn’t be possible to screenshot any of these chats with the Meta-owned firm stating, “the recipient also can’t take a screenshot of anything you send using view once.”.
Users should feel safe sending these messages but a new bug has exposed a reason why everyone should be careful before using view once.
The team at Zengo X Research Team recently found a flaw that appears to allow people to screenshot “view once” chats if they happen to use WhatsApp on the web. For those unaware, WhatsApp allows users to check their chats via a browser – such as Googke Chrome – and it’s this feature that is causing the problems.
“As part of our ongoing security research we have identified a critical privacy flaw in Meta’s WhatsApp, the world ’s most popular Instant Messaging (IM) app,” explained Tal Be’ery from Zengo X.
“The Zengo X Research Team has discovered that WhatsApp’s View Once media feature, intended for increased privacy, is completely broken and can be trivially bypassed.
“The only thing that is worse than no privacy, is a false sense of privacy in which users are led to believe some forms of communication are private when in fact they are not. Currently, WhatsApp’s View once is a blunt form of false privacy and should either be thoroughly fixed or abandoned.”
Zengo X Research quickly made WhatsApp aware of the glitch with WhatsApp now rolling out a fix which should prevent screenshots from being taken no matter how or where you access WhatsApp.
However, if you are thinking of using “view once” you should still be careful and only send messages to people you really trust.
In a statement sent to TechCrunch, WhatsApp said: “We are already in the process of rolling out updates to view once on web. We continue to encourage users to only send view once messages to people they know and trust.”
