WhatsApp Scams Exposed: The Ultimate Guide to Protecting Your Privacy

• By Adrian Willson
• 27-07-2023
• Misc

As per studies conducted by Statista, WhatsApp, a popular messaging app has 2 billion active users around the world.

Meta which was formerly known as Facebook has been facing legal issues in recent years. Although Meta has promised that users’ privacy is protected under its privacy protection guidelines, we all know how much the data is being protected.

Nonetheless, there are roughly 3 billion active Meta users. It does not matter to a common user that their data is being monitored and collected by big corporations. They use this data to promote their services or products. What concerns the end user is that the data collected by WhatsApp scammers can be devastating.

In a democratic world, we have the right to keep some information private, away from public eyes. It is nobody's business what your lawful socio-political ideology or views are. It can have a negative impact on society if such information of individuals were to be breached.

It is the failure of the society, if it cannot safeguard the interest of its individual who is its voice. It is a moral obligation for the society as a whole to keep its citizens shielded for any opportunistic elements in the society. The fact that your data is breached when you search for a certain product on the internet regardless of the search engine used, and then when you open a new webpage, it recommends products that you were searching just a few minutes ago.

What protection does an elected government have to safeguard its citizens' interest?

When a political party that we elect comes to power, we need to understand and remember that they are the same individuals from the same society. The only difference between you and the elected individuals is that they are allowed special powers to run and provide solutions for society as a whole.

Thus, it is the duty of the elected government to safeguard our privacy from a potential threat that can exploit us as an individual in society.

European Union

The General Data Protection Regulation, incepted in 2018, has regulated and laid down guidelines regarding the use of personal data within European borders.

Any company requiring the personal data of their customers must strictly follow the following guidelines:

• Minimization of data: Process only the necessary details.
• The purpose for data collection: The company only needs data that is directed under the law, understandable, and well-defined while handling customer data.
• Accurate data: The collected data must be correct to process the request for goods and services.
• Accountability: Companies are liable to protect consumer data and should handle it as per the General Data Protection Regulation guidelines.
• Storage limitation: In light of the initial purposes for processing, personal data may only be retained for as long as necessary.

As the United Kingdom is no longer a part of the European Union, it has its own separate sets of guidelines that ensure the data protection of its citizens.

In the UK, the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill 2022–23 is now being evaluated and enacted. Under this act, based on lawful conduct, personal data can be handled.

• Consent: A person has permitted their personal information to be used for a certain purpose in some way.
• Contract: Personal data can be handled if it's necessary to carry out the conditions of an agreement to which the subject has consented.

Law-enforced obligation The processing of the data is necessary to fulfill a legal obligation that the organization in charge of the data must meet.

Since it serves their best interests, the party in charge of the data has a legitimate interest in processing it.

Businesses handling personal data in the UK must abide by the following seven fundamental principles:

Following the law with integrity, being fair, and being open to inspection limit of purpose

• The reduction of data
• Storage restriction Accuracy
• The highest significance (for security) is, to be honest and discrete
• Accountability

The maximum fine for anyone found to have broken these rules is 500,000 British pounds.

United States

The California Consumer Privacy Act was passed in the United States in 2020. The aim of this act is to provide added security for its citizens. These stringent regulations are mandatory if one has to conduct its business. Even if this act is aimed at those who conduct business in California, these companies must adhere to the law passed regardless of their headquarters in the US or outside the US.

As per the law, any company having an annual sales of more than $25 million, handling a customer base of more than 50,000 deriving 50% of the sales through their existing database must adhere to it.

It has been observed that the states like other states in the US are inspired by this act and have started to implement it in their respective states.

The CCPA protects the following private rights, among others:

• The right to know what personal data a corporation may have gathered about them, how it may use and share that data, and how to exercise that right of access.
• The option to remove any personally identifying data we may have collected about them (with some restrictions).
• They have the option to prevent the sale of their personal information to such parties.
• The right, if they utilize their CCPA rights, to be shielded from discrimination.
• Even though data privacy laws vary by nation and region, they always impose limitations on how businesses can use WhatsApp to connect with their clients.
  

  Other threats faced by WhatsApp

After the success of a messaging app, many ape successful features and incorporate them in their apps. Thus, similar to rest of the messaging apps, WhatsApp also offers message encryption services which are distinct from the rest of their services.

Although users' conversations on WhatsApp are known to be stored on their cloud servers, it is not secured. Data such as contact numbers, IP numbers, and physical locations can be collected by breaching these servers. Such a data breach is a privacy breach, and the developed nations must try to look into it and secure it.

Many find it easy to exchange and interact with others using WhatsApp, thus fulfilling its primary objective.

While interacting with others regarding business or on a personal matter we exchange our details like WhatsApp number along with other sensitive details like our name, delivery addresses, and customer numbers.

If you were to use WhatsApp for reaching out to your customers, and if a customer approaches you on WhatsApp, then as per the law of the data, it is not a breach of sensitive information. Because if you were to convert the customer into a sale, you might require the customer's address for delivery and other personal information that might be mandatory by law to collect for your records.

However, complications begin after you use the customer's number and start sending marketing information regarding new products and services. Thus, you, as the organization, are solely responsible if the customer's details get leaked to some other third-party individual or organization.

If the firm or organization has its headquarters in one country and has branches or outlets in different countries, then the allowable sensitive data collected will differ from country to country and client to client.

One of the most striking examples is PrivacyShield, which exists between the United States and the European Union and is an understanding between the two parties regarding the safety of sensitive data of American and European citizens collected by firms or organizations.

However, by June 2020, the European Union had concluded that PrivacyShield failed to offer adequate protection for securing the sensitive data collected by organizations under the GDPR.

In June 2021, the European Union came up with the Standard Contractual Clauses for International Transfer. The new rules replaced the previous ambiguous ones. Thus, complying with the new regulations laid down by the European Union regarding the protection of WhatsApp customer data.

Although the new regulations are in place, it is still unclear whether they will be effective in preventing complete customer privacy data protection while customers use WhatsApp as a communication platform.

How to secure WhatsApp in business communication and avoid potential threats

Using the encryption option

Before answering the above question, we need to understand that there is a vast difference between the data protection stated by advanced economies like the United States and the European Union and the WhatsApp security protocol chat software.

WhatsApp encrypts the entire conversation between its users, similar to other popular messaging applications. When someone starts a conversation On WhatsApp with someone else, the entire conversation can only be viewed by them. Any third party interested in the conversation cannot read the message due to the encryption feature being turned on.

The encryption feature loses this security feature if the user uses another feature of saving the entire conversation on the cloud server. WhatsApp has another feature that allows its user to take a backup of their conversation so that they can view it in the future when they choose to do so.

Nonetheless this data gets saved on cloud servers which lack the necessary security feature that enables the hacker to retrieve the entire information if they hack it.

Furthermore, such features need to be turned on by the users, they have the option of either encrypting the message, store their conversation, or both.

What happens when data gets breached?

Breaching of these sensitive data can be very dangerous since the attack carried out by hackers is not on a country as a whole but at an individual level leading to identity theft, exposure to fraudulent activities or both.

Most scammers and hackers access the dark web, an illegal website where the personal and sensitive details of victims are exchanged for a price. The chances of these victims falling for prevalent WhatsApp scams are equally high.

Several scammers and hackers use apps that are available online for a few dollars to collect data from their victims.

We have already mentioned earlier that users have the option of storing their conversation on the cloud servers of WhatsApp through a backup feature. There is one more feature in WhatsApp which requires permission of their users. WhatsApp requires its users to grant permission to go through the contacts on the smartphone and those other users using WhatsApp be searched and allow the user to sync with them.

Sensitive data like the name of the users, smartphones live location, and IP address gets stored when a user takes a backup on WhatsApp. Such data is quite critical from a scammers and hackers perspective while committing fraudulent activities.

The chances of ripping off a single victim can be multiplied by the added details of their contact on their phone. Thus, scammers and hackers can further breach these new contact details and rip them off.

We have already mentioned before that Meta has acquired WhatsApp, and the parent company has ensured that it syncs the WhatsApp details with Meta under the pretext of enhancing the user experience. Thus, Meta has your contact number to avoid potential threats.

Meta also links the number of WhatsApp users to its social media platform, broadening its user base. Questions are raised regarding WhatsApp's privacy data collection procedures. Meta needs to answer other technical questions regarding the storage of WhatsApp users' contact lists on their cloud servers.

WhatsApp requires its users to search for contact lists once they have downloaded the app on their mobile phones. Thus, the contact syncing feature of WhatsApp allows users to determine if any of the existing contacts on their mobile phones have a WhatsApp account or not.

Questions arise about whether the security feature on WhatsApp can be breached or not. Some experts say that it can be done since there are some specific apps that scammers and hackers create that can be used to steal such details.

Many have already raised questions regarding the accountability of Meta, as sources suggest that Meta played a vital role in the 2016 US Presidential elections. When such sensitive data is collected by a firm or organization, having a shady past can be troubling.

Since these cloud servers of WhatsApp are located in the United States, Meta refrains from complying with some sterner consumer privacy data handling rules and regulations.

Final thoughts

Although WhatsApp is popular among many, it is still preferred over other messaging apps. Governments across the world should take notice of it and take stringent action against it.

Violating end users' data must be strictly condemned by the government since scammers make use of these loopholes to exploit the end users. There are many instances where scammers have taken advantage of and ripped off their victims.

Scammers also make use of malicious malware and ransomware to attack unwary WhatsApp users.

You should take personal security measures to safeguard your WhatsApp account.