WhatsApp head Will Cathcart on Tuesday said the claim made by X owner Elon Musk that the Meta-owned messaging platform exports your user data is “not correct.”
Last week, Musk, in a post on X, said, “WhatsApp exports your user data every night. Some people still think it is secure.”
Now, Cathcart has criticized the tech billionaire for making an incorrect claim.
“Many have said this already, but worth repeating: this is not correct. We take security seriously, and that’s why we end-to-end encrypt your messages. They don’t get sent to us every night or exported to us,” said the WhatsApp head.
“If you do want to backup your messages, you can use your cloud provider, and you can even use end-to-end encryption for that too,” added Cathcart, advising users.
However, disagreeing with Cathcart, users in the comment section said that Musk had said nothing about messages but data.
“He said user data. He did not specify messages,” a user wrote.
“That’s off-topic. The tweet says Meta exports user data – i.e., metadata like telecom providers collect. Will’s answer talks about content (which telecom providers don’t usually collect). Feels like misdirection, which is Meta modus operandi,” another user said.
One more user mentioned, “You’re misleading. It’s user data, including metadata, not messages.”
