Google would have lied: your WhatsApp conversations saved on Drive would be vulnerable

An investigation led by several attorneys general in the United States accuses Google of failing to ensure that WhatsApp conversations saved to Drive were not end-to-end encrypted. This obviously poses a concern for the confidentiality of your messages.

WhatsApp allows you to save conversations on Google Drive // ​​Source: Frandroid

It is a very dark picture from Google which is drawn up to us there. US attorneys general accuse the multinational of several violations of antitrust rules. In other words, the company is suspected of having engaged in numerous anti-competitive practices and, in this context, a damning document was released (PDF). It is a question, among other things, of the confidentiality of your conversations WhatsApp saved on Google drive.

As a reminder, since 2015, Android users can save a copy of their WhatsApp conversations on Google Drive. This includes messages, but also photos and videos shared with his contacts. This is a very practical function when you want change smartphone without losing all that data on the app. Thus, the Google and WhatsApp teams had highlighted the fact that these backups were encrypted to stay private.

A speech “not quite accurate”

However, the 17 attorneys general who signed the complaint against Google cite a memo circulated internally in 2016 which calls into question the confidentiality of WhatsApp data saved on Drive. The memo in question would thus explain that ” WhatsApp’s current talk around end-to-end encryption isn’t quite right“.

WhatsApp currently reports that all communication through its product is end-to-end encrypted, with keys that only users have. They failed to clarify that data shared from WhatsApp to third-party services does not have the same guarantee. This includes backups to Google Drive.

The objective of the internal memo was, however, to make this information more transparent since it notably affirms the importance of ensuring that “users know that when WhatsApp media files are shared with third parties like Drive, the files are no longer encrypted by WhatsApp “.

Lie by omission

However, according to the complainants, “Google has done nothing to correct this misunderstanding. On the contrary, he failed to disclose this relevant information to his customers, with the intention of continuing to recruit more Google Drive users.“. The blog post published a year before, in 2015, even claimed that the backups were private.

Google also concealed the fact that it could access users’ WhatsApp communications. Normally, users can sign in to their Google Drive account and view the files in it. But according to an internal Google memo, Google was “opaque” saving users’ WhatsApp messages on Google Drive. As a result, users could not log into Google Drive to find that Google had access to their decrypted WhatsApp communications.

For generous prosecutors, there is no doubt: Google’s cover-ups about the privacy of saved WhatsApp messages “have resulted in increased demand for Google’s backup service. Users quickly subscribed to backup WhatsApp communications to Google Drive“.

Google headquarters

The document thus claims that in June 2016, around 434 million WhatsApp users had backed up around 345 billion WhatsApp files to Google Drive and that in May 2017, Google Drive had gained around 750 million new WhatsApp backup accounts.

The app doesn’t lie

The conclusion is dry. “In short, Google had no problem violating the privacy of nearly a billion users if it helped them grow their business.. There is no doubt that the Mountain View firm will prepare its defense to deny these accusations. Note also that in the WhatsApp application, in the backup settings, it is specified that “messages and media saved in Google Drive are not protected by WhatsApp end-to-end encryption»(See photo of Une).

It is possible that this clarification was added a few years after the deployment of the backup function.

The messaging application prepares different menus on its iOS and Android applications to allow a simplified transfer of conversations when changing smartphones.
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