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Messaging service WhatsApp ‘broke privacy laws’ by storing numbers

   daniella graham
   Daniella Graham for Metro.co.uk and Hayden SmithTuesday 29 Jan 2013
   10:24 pm

   WhatsApp ‘broke privacy laws’ by storing numbers

   Messaging service WhatsApp breached privacy laws by asking subscribers
   for access to their contacts – and storing every phone number, an
   inquiry has revealed.

   Rather than deleting data belonging to non-users, everything was
   uploaded and kept on the company’s servers in California.

   The practice emerged following a year-long joint investigation by
   Canadian and Dutch watchdogs, which said it violated ‘internationally
   accepted privacy principles’.

   WhatsApp said it ‘hashed’ numbers to make them anonymous but
   investigators said they could still be recovered ‘with a modest amount
   of computing effort’ if the database was breached.

   Jacob Kohnstamm, of the Dutch Data Protection Authority, said he was
   ‘not completely satisfied yet’ with the inquiry. ‘Both users and
   non-users should have control over their personal data and users must
   be able to freely decide what contact details they wish to share with
   WhatsApp,’ he added.

   Only iPhone owners running iOS6 software can add contacts manually but
   WhatsApp has now agreed to extend the option to other operating
   systems. It has also beefed up security by encrypting messages and
   improving its authentication process after investigators said bogus
   messages could be sent by a third party.

   The UK Information Commissioners’s Office had last night yet to
   establish if there were implications under British data protection law.
   WhatsApp, one of the world’s top five best-selling apps with 300million
   users, had not commented.

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