Iranian state television urged citizens to delete the WhatsApp messenger from their mobile devices, claiming, without providing evidence, that the service was allegedly transferring user data to Israel. About this informs AP.
Representatives of WhatsApp have already expressed concern about such claims, stressing that “these false messages will be an excuse to block services at a time when people need them the most.” The company reminded that WhatsApp uses end-to-end encryption, which excludes the possibility of viewing messages by the service provider.
“We don’t track your exact location, we don’t keep logs of who’s messaging who, and we don’t track private messages that people send to each other. We don’t give large amounts of information to any government.” – added in the company.
End-to-end encryption ensures the confidentiality of communication, as only the sender and receiver can read the message, and if intercepted, the content will appear as a garbled set of characters without the corresponding key. The data centers where WhatsApp data is stored are not necessarily located within the user’s country. For example, it is likely that the data of users from Iran is stored outside the country.
Iran has been restricting access to various social platforms for a long time. In particular, in 2022, the country’s authorities banned WhatsApp and Google Play during mass protests over the death of a woman detained by the morality police. This ban was lifted at the end of last year.
