In recent times forefront of messaging apps WhatsApp is at peak these days. After all it does swank over a billion users.Well now with those billion users also loom a billion different people to hack into.hackers do it by using your IP address.
Luckily WhatsApp fixed that trouble somewhat by adding up end-to-end encryption to all conversations. This offered the users a few impressions of privacy and safety.
Spiral a Leak?
Though, certain scenarios can’t be lined out. What if WhatsApp itself leaks precious private information, regardless of the encryption actions in place?
YouTube user Colin Hardy exposed the issue that in a previous version of WhatsApp (back in June) that turns out the app did really leak your data.
To make the subject simpler for everyone, Whatsapp can potentially seep out data, with the trouble through web previews. This is at what time when you type in a website in your WhatsApp chat and a preview (snippet) shows up on top of your message as you type. Most users love that and it’s a helpful feature as well.
How WhatsApp Leaks Your Data
WhatsApp will throw queries through your IP address straight to the website, at the same time as you’re typing.
Let’s assume you’re typing in YouTube.com. WhatsApp will throw a request directly all the way through your IP address (the request can be traced) to the website in query (YouTube in this case).
Even though there is end-to-end encryption, WhatsApp will disclose your IP address into the wild.
So if someone nasty seems to be inspecting your action, through WhatsApp’s query they can openly trace your IP.So be careful about it.
How Twitter Avoids This Problem
Normally requests are sent through the service’s own servers. Twitter, for example, sends website queries through its own server instead of directly using your IP address. The link itself is sent in the form of plain text to the server which then requests for a preview using its own IP instead of using yours.
Fortunately WhatsApp recently got updated so they may have fixed the issue. We’re currently testing to see if the problem still persists. Until then, it is prudent to not share links until WhatsApp officially clarifies its stance on this security issue.
