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WhatsApp has found itself under fire for an inadvertent issue with the integrity of its “delete for everyone” function. The problem is that when a recipient is using an iPhone, and when the recipient has elected to save media attachments to their device’s camera roll, WhatsApp cannot bypass iOS security to delete the media. And so, while the message sender might think their message has been deleted, in actual fact it hasn’t at all—at least not entirely. And, potentially worse, there is no way of knowing whether or not that’s the case.
Pause for thought as minds are racked for examples of photos sent to the wrong people or the wrong group, or just the wrong photos sent, period.
WhatsApp already puts a time limit on its “delete for everyone” option—but that doesn’t touch upon this issue, which is down to the security layers imposed by Apple—preventing an app accessing a device gallery without explicit permission to do so. And here, privacy protection battles privacy protection, because Apple’s security layer is actually a good thing. Android doesn’t offer the same firewalls—“Delete for Everyone” will work just fine on their devices.
And so the likelihood is this issue will hit hardest on Android users sending media to WhatsApp groups with mixed Android and iPhone users. A “delete for everyone” will only work for those in the group either using Android devices or using iPhones but without the “save to camera roll” option selected. Worth bearing in mind that saving media to the device is a default setting, so the issue will likely be widespread.
Security researcher Shitesh Sachan has now raised awareness of the issue—sharing his findings with The Hacker News, which confirmed with WhatsApp that when “save to camera roll” is selected, the issue is actually not an issue, but an unfortunate feature, so to speak.
“This feature is working properly,” WhatsApp explained in a statement, “and using the 'delete for everyone' feature in time will result in media being removed from the WhatsApp chat thread. We provide simple options to help iPhone users manage the media they receive from friends and family, per the best practices established by operating systems. If a user chooses to save images to their camera roll they are stored out of reach of WhatsApp's 'delete for everyone’ feature.”
WhatsApp iOS
There are of course no real protections for messaging the wrong people or the wrong content. Media can be saved and messages screenshot. Be careful, think before you click, check before sending, etc, would seem to be the advice.
There’s every chance WhatsApp will instigate a change in a future release to remove this issue—it would seem an obvious move and one that’s in the best interest of Apple to support as well. After all, the deletion of content sent in error is a basic privacy protection we all rely on more times than we’ll likely admit.
In the meantime, it would be great if WhatsApp could provide some form of warning on the deletion screen as to the iPhone issue, unless and until it’s fixed. At least then people could consider themselves warned.
