Delete WhatsApp from your phones, it sends …: Iran government tells citizens; WhatsApp responds

Delete WhatsApp from your smartphones …, so goes the new advisory from the Iran government to people across the country. According to a report by news agency AP, Iranian State television has urged people to remove WhatsApp from their smartphones. The advisory claims that the Meta-owned messaging app gathers user information to send to Israel. Iran had blocked access to various social media platforms over the years. However, many people in the country use proxies and virtual private networks, or VPNs, to access them. Iran banned WhatsApp and Google Play in 2022 during mass protests against the government over the death of a woman held by the country’s morality police. Iran lifted the ban on WhatsApp in 2024 only. Over the years, WhatsApp has been one of Iran’s most popular messaging apps besides Instagram and Telegram.

WhatsApp responds to Delete WhatsApp advisory

WhatsApp expressed concern over the advisory saying that it is an attempt to ban the app. In a statement, WhatsApp said that it was “concerned these false reports will be an excuse for our services to be blocked at a time when people need them the most.” It further added, “We do not track your precise location, we don’t keep logs of who everyone is messaging and we do not track the personal messages people are sending one another,” it added. “We do not provide bulk information to any government.”It added that WhatsApp uses end-to-end encryption, this means that no one other than the sender and recipient can read a message. In layman terms, end-to-end encryption means that messages are scrambled so that only the sender and recipient can see them. If anyone else intercepts the message, all they will see is a garble that can’t be unscrambled without the key.WhatsApp is owned by Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram.