Your WhatsApp conversations might not be as private as you think

This is a little concerning.

Do you use WhatsApp on an iPhone or another iOS device? If so, WhatsApp conversations that you thought had been deleted may still exist, according to a prominent security researcher. Jonathan Zdziarski, who writes a blog called Zdziarski's Blog of Things and specialises in Apple products, recently penned a post suggesting that forensic traces of WhatsApp conversations remain even after they have been deleted, cleared or archived. Furthermore, he also suggests that the only way to get rid of those conversations is to delete the WhatsApp app entirely. Earlier this year, WhatsApp introduced end-to-end encryption services, making it impossible for WhatsApp or other parties to read the content of messages exchanged on the app. However, because there is, as Zdziarski mentions, forensic traces of the conversations remaining on the device, they could theoretically be recovered and accessed by other parties with access to the phone, for example (in extreme cases), law enforcement. According to Zdziarski, the problem is far more prevalent in iMessage and on other iPhone apps but because of WhatsApp’s huge popularity worldwide, it is bound to be the cause of some alarm. Zdziarski stresses that it’s no major reason to panic but has encouraged WhatsApp users to be “aware of WhatsApp’s footprint” and has offered a number of tips to prevent it from happening here.