One of the most famous and widely used social networking application WhatsApp gets infected by a nasty bug. The rare WhatsApp bug is allowing others to read your entire chats in the plain text. It happens once you have changed your phone number.
This issue came to light when an Amazon employee Abby Fuller yesterday made tweets. These tweets were regarding an incident which she came across.
According to her, the well-recognized encrypted messaging app WhatsApp can expose your private messages under some specific circumstances.
Abby Fuller in her tweets says, she unexpectedly found some strange and hidden messages on WhatsApp which were not accompanying her contacts. All this happen after she makes a new account with WhatsApp on her new phone using a new number for the first time.
Moreover, she considers all the mysterious messages are appearing on her new account was the message history connected with the WhatsApp account of the former owner of the same mobile number, which the app pushed to her mobile phone.
In her tweets, she added that the came into view chat history was not full, but indeed the real threads or direct messages conversations. However, she did not confirm that those messages also include any message which was sent to her by the former owner.
On the other hand, setting up WhatsApp on an entirely new device along with using a new phone number cannot restore the full messages records of the person owning it previously. It is because the enterprise never backs up user’s encrypted conversations on its server.
But, it does keep pending messages on their server until they get delivered to the recipients when they return online.
What can be interpreted
It is clear that the messages Abby Fuller founds on her new WhatsApp account were the undelivered messages. All these messages sent by the contacts of the former owner once they stop using that particular number.
To prevent such happenings, WhatsApp suggests user to either delete their account before stop using a number. Also, alleviate the WhatsApp account with Change number feature which is present in the App setting options.
If you forget to delete your previous account so, there is nothing to worry. The WhatsApp instinctively removes all the unsent messages from its server with 45 days of your inactivity.
But, Fuller said that she owns the new phone number from quite a few months. It which means more than 45 days. However, there might be a bug due to which WhatsApp become in able to delete those messages. It includes all those messages were linked with the former owner of the SIM.
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About the Author
Rebecca James is an IT consultant with forward thinking approach toward developing IT infrastructures of SMEs. She writes to engage with individuals and raise awareness of digital security, privacy, and better IT infrastructure.
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