Google accused of accessing private WhatsApp chats as part of deal with Facebook

Agencies | Texas

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Google is facing a huge blow in the US over its internet advertising practices. In the state of Texas in the US, an attorney general has announced an antitrust over the company’s ad tech that has helped the company allegedly control ad pricing. The case has made several revelations about Google, including a backdoor deal that it made with Facebook. As a part of the deal, Google can access private chats and photos of WhatsApp users soon after Facebook acquired the app.

This is perhaps one of the shocking allegations that the antitrust case has filed against Google. The Texas attorney general has noted that Google and Facebook have been engaged in a long-running conspiracy against WhatsApp users who are entirely unfamiliar that their data is up for grabs to the world’s most dominant search engine company. The allegation finds the mention on the 57the page into the complaint, but the evidence to prove this accusation is not worthwhile. This is because of the biggest reason that goes in WhatsApp’s favour.

Backdoor deal, really?

WhatsApp’s chats and calls are protected by end-to-end encryption, which means that anything you share with your contacts cannot be read by anyone except the two contacts. Neither WhatsApp nor Facebook has access to the private data that WhatsApp users like you and me share on a daily basis. After all, end-to-end encryption is the main reason why Facebook cannot meet the request from several governments around the world, including India’s, to create a back door for data monitoring.

Now as WhatsApp and Facebook or another third party cannot access the chat content and this is why the Texas Attorney General dragged Google into the conversation about the data backdoor deal. The point that this lawsuit makes is about the backup file of WhatsApp chats stored on Google Drive. WhatsApp users rely on Google’s cloud storage for backing up WhatsApp chats on Android phones. This backup file that houses all chats and media has no end-to-end encryption. But this is an obvious arrangement for WhatsApp users on Android devices. People using WhatsApp can stop backing up their chats on Google Drive at any time.

Backups are not exclusive

The pact between Google and Facebook about cloud backups is not exclusive. WhatsApp uses Apple’s iCloud for backup on iPhone devices, which is the result of the strategic collaboration between Facebook and Apple. In either case, users must initiate the backup on both platforms. All this makes up the allegation against Google and Facebook less substantial and not so much bloated as the attorney general noted in the lawsuit.

Both Facebook and Google have denied such a deal between them, although, given the legal nature of the matter, they have not provided official statements. Google even cited a recent statement from Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, who said the data stored in Google Drive will “never” be used for advertising. “We don’t sell your information to anyone,” Pichai said in June, “and we don’t use information in apps where you mainly store personal content, such as Gmail, Drive, Calendar, and Photos – for advertising purposes, period.” This includes everything you to your Drive storage.

By taking both sides into account, the case makes much less sense than is hyped. I’m not saying other parts of the lawsuit are unfounded because that’s something the attorney general will back up in court. But as for the back door deal between Google and Facebook is concerned, better to leave it at face value and wait for the attorney general to provide solid evidence to prove if such a deal exists between the two tech giants, even if the thought of it might give you some anxiety about your WhatsApp data.

Google would have been part of a back door Facebook which allowed it to access WhatsApp data.