Your WhatsApp Chats Never Actually Get Deleted

Facebook-owned WhatsApp rolled out end-to-end encryption, the popular messaging platform ensured users that their chats are secured from any unwanted third-party attention. In fact, WhatsApp joined the league of very few chat apps that offer complete end-to-end encryption. However, a new revelation by security expert has again put a question mark on WhatsApp privacy.

Appleā€™s iOS security expert Jonathan Zdziarski has claimed that the chats onWhatsAppĀ are never removed even after users have hit the delete button. ā€œThe latest version of the app tested leaves forensic trace of all of your chats, even after youā€™ve deleted, cleared, or archived themā€¦ even if you ā€˜Clear All Chatsā€™, he said in a post.

Zdziarski suggests that the only way to completely remove all traces of chats is to remove theĀ WhatsAppĀ entirely from the phone.

ā€œTo test, I installed the app and started a few different threads. I then archived some, cleared, some, and deleted some threads. I made a second backup after running the ā€œClear All Chatsā€ function in WhatsApp. None of these deletion or archival options made any difference in how deleted records were preserved. In all cases, the deleted SQLite records remained intact in the database,ā€ he explained.

If you are thinking thatĀ WhatsAppĀ does this purposely then you are wrong. ā€œJust to be clear, WhatsApp is deleting the record (they donā€™t appear to be trying to intentionally preserve data),ā€ he said.

The expert highlighted thatĀ WhatsAppĀ leaves a trail of forensic trace which can be recovered and is a common problem among any application that uses SQLite.

Thatā€s the actual truth. ā€œThis is because SQLite by default does not vacuum databases on iOS (likely in an effort to prevent wear). When a record is deleted, it is simply added to a ā€œfree listā€, but free records do not get overwritten until later on when the database needs the extra storage (usually after many more records are created),ā€ he added.
The issue seems to affect the iOS app only. There is no reason to panic over this issue. ā€œBut you should be aware ofĀ WhatsAppā€™s footprint,ā€ he mentioned.

Source: gadgetsnow