Iran asks people to delete WhatsApp, hints that app is leaking location data to Israel military

India Today

18-06-2025

In the midst of war with Israel, Iran has suffered a number of high-profile assassinations in the recent days. The accuracy of these attacks on high-profile target has stunned not just the Iranian government but also the rest of world. Now, Iran is hinting that its officials might have been targeted on the basis of location data leaked by apps and phones, including through WhatsApp. And the company has issued a directive to its citizens asking them to remove WhatsApp from their phones. advertisementIranian state television on Tuesday called on citizens to delete WhatsApp from their phones. The announcement claimed that the messaging app could be leaking user information to the Israeli military. Although this claim has been strongly denied by the app's parent company, Meta Platforms.According to an Associated Press report, the state TV broadcast warned that WhatsApp is allegedly 'gathering user information' and sharing it with Israel. The platform is currently one of the most widely used messaging platforms in Iran. Although the broadcast offered no concrete evidence, it has stirred growing fears over digital privacy and national security in the country.
Commenting on the allegation, WhatsApp described the claims as 'false reports' and expressed concern that such statements could be used as justification to block the platform entirely. 'We are concerned these false reports will be an excuse for our services to be blocked at a time when people need them the most,' the company said.advertisementWhatsApp has also reiterated that it uses end-to-end encryption. This is a security standard many messaging platforms follow to ensure only the sender and recipient of a message can read its contents. 'We do not track your precise location, we don't keep logs of who everyone is messaging, and we do not track the personal messages people are sending one another,' the statement read. 'We do not provide bulk information to any government.'Meanwhile, many experts are pointing out that end-to-end encryption does not eliminate all security concerns. Gregory Falco, a cybersecurity researcher and assistant professor at Cornell University, told the Associated Press that metadata — information such as when a message is sent and to whom — can still be leaked. Such concerns can be particularly troublesome in case there is a tacit or unknown co-operation between American tech companies and different militaries. In the past we have seen tech companies like Google, Microsoft and others work with Israeli government and its military to provide certain services, although tech companies deny that their services are used for military purposes by Israel.At the same time, Israeli companies like NSO — of Pegasus spyware fame — often target apps like WhatsApp to hack into people's phones, including iPhones. WhatsApp had earlier slammed NSO and had filed cases against in a US court.