Currently, WhatsApp holds the title of being the most popular messaging platform with 2 billion monthly active users.
Reuters reports that there was a memo sent to all House representatives at the beginning of the week and the ban has to do with potential privacy concerns.
The notice reportedly says that the “Office of Cybersecurity has deemed WhatsApp a high risk to users due to the lack of transparency in how it protects user data, absence of stored data encryption, and potential security risks involved with its use”. If one has a WhatsApp application on their House-managed device, they’ll be contacted to remove it promptly.
Members of the US House of Representatives are allegedly being recommended using other chat clients, like Microsoft’s Teams platform, Amazon’s Wickr, Signal, and Apple’s iMessage and FaceTime.Like one could expect, Meta representatives categorically disagree with the assessment:
We disagree with the House Chief Administrative Officer’s characterization in the strongest possible terms. We know members and their staffs regularly use WhatsApp and we look forward to ensuring members of the House can join their Senate counterparts in doing so officially. Messages on WhatsApp are end-to-end encrypted by default, meaning only the recipients and not even WhatsApp can see them. This is a higher level of security than most of the apps on the CAO’s approved list that do not offer that protection.
As some of you may remember, TikTok is also banned from US House of Representatives devices – this ban was introduced as early as 2022. Back then, the House’s Chief Administrative Officer labeled the app a high risk and ordered its removal from all official devices, prohibiting future downloads as well.Lawmakers are particularly worried that TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, based in Beijing, could be compelled to share user data with the Chinese government. There are also fears that the app could be used to monitor Americans or influence what content they see. As a precaution, the House moved to prohibit its use on official devices and required its removal.
