{"id":260895,"date":"2026-06-01T07:13:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T11:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/01\/messaging-apps-retreat-from-privacy-protections\/"},"modified":"2026-06-01T07:25:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T11:25:13","slug":"messaging-apps-retreat-from-privacy-protections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/01\/messaging-apps-retreat-from-privacy-protections\/","title":{"rendered":"Messaging apps retreat from privacy protections"},"content":{"rendered":"

Messaging apps retreat from privacy protections<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/e.vnexpress.net\/news\/tech\/tech-news\/messaging-apps-retreat-from-privacy-protections-5080721.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-06-01 07:13:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: e.vnexpress.net<\/a><\/p>\n

In May, U.S. company Meta removed end-to-end encryption on Instagram, citing a “too low activation rate.<\/p>\n

It had introduced E2EE as an opt-in feature in 2021, requiring users to dig deep into settings to enable it.<\/p>\n

In March, a TikTok spokesperson in the U.S. told U.K. state broadcaster BBC there were no plans to implement E2EE in its direct messaging feature.<\/p>\n

Meta’s other platform, WhatsApp, is entangled in privacy-related litigation in the U.S., with plaintiffs from countries including Australia, Brazil, and India.<\/p>\n

According to Russian news outlet RT, the company is accused of allowing employees and third parties to access users’ private messages in breach of its original security commitments.<\/p>\n

In the wake of the WhatsApp controversy, X owner Elon Musk and Telegram founder Pavel Durov both declared that WhatsApp’s security promises amount to “the lie of the century.”<\/p>\n

Durov wrote on X: “Only an idiot would trust WhatsApp in 2026. When analyzing how WhatsApp implements encryption, we found multiple vulnerabilities that could be exploited.<\/p>\n

By removing E2EE, apps like Instagram revert to standard transport encryption (such as TLS\/HTTPS), meaning messages passing through Meta’s servers exist in plaintext that their systems can read.<\/p>\n

If a message is the equivalent of a letter, the absence of E2EE means it is sent without being sealed in an envelope.<\/p>\n

Postal workers (the messaging servers) or anyone else can read the contents.<\/p>\n

Even more worryingly, the letter carriers (the messaging service providers) can log everything about a user’s preferences, habits, and interests, and sell that data to advertising companies or use it to train AI.<\/p>\n

About-face by major tech companies<\/strong><\/p>\n

According to British newspaper The Guardian, at Facebook’s annual F8 developer conference in the United States in April 2019, CEO Mark Zuckerberg declared: “The future is private.”<\/p>\n

He committed at the time to restructuring the entire infrastructure and merging the messaging systems of WhatsApp, Messenger, and…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Messaging apps retreat from privacy protections https:\/\/e.vnexpress.net\/news\/tech\/tech-news\/messaging-apps-retreat-from-privacy-protections-5080721.html Publish Date: 2026-06-01 07:13:00 Source Domain: e.vnexpress.net In…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":260896,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/vcdn1-vnexpress.vnecdn.net\/2026\/05\/26\/a1-1779774785-1930-1779775160.jpg?w=680&h=0&q=100&dpr=1&fit=crop&s=O903OOtDGCx5TLY-M4iEfA","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[30],"class_list":["post-260895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-privacy","tag-breach"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260895"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260895"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":260897,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260895\/revisions\/260897"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}