{"id":142891,"date":"2019-06-24T16:26:02","date_gmt":"2019-06-24T16:26:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sftarticles.wpenginepowered.com\/en\/?p=142891"},"modified":"2025-07-01T21:46:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T04:46:13","slug":"whatsapp-fingerprint-id","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/whatsapp-fingerprint-id\/","title":{"rendered":"WhatsApp Privacy: India wants fingerprint ID on every message"},"content":{"rendered":"

End-to-end encryption is a double-edged sword. There is no doubt we all love the fact that we can talk away to our friends and family safe in the knowledge our messages really are private. In a modern world that has seemingly declared war on personal privacy, it really is something to be valued. The flip of that, however, is that some people hide behind that privacy and use the cover to cause problems.<\/p>\n

These problems could be the planning of illegal activities or the whipping up of hatred by sending false infromation across the network. One country facing problems due to WhatsApp and its rigorous anonymity has been India<\/strong>, where lies spread across the network have caused lynchings, beatings, and even interfered in the democratic process<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Indian government is now pushing WhatsApp to make changes so that it can better track who has been sending messages on WhatsApp in India. It is a little worrying, however, to see exactly what the Indian government wants WhatsApp to do.<\/p>\n

The Indian government is pressuring WhatsApp to fingerprint all messages so they can be more easily tracked<\/h2>\n

\"a<\/p>\n

The Economic Times in India<\/a> is reporting that two officials from Narendra Modi\u2019s right-wing Hindu nationalist BJP government have said that they\u2019re pressuring WhatsApp to add fingerprints to all messages sent, so it\u2019ll be easier to track who has sent what.<\/p>\n

The government has been pushing WhatsApp to add more traceability measures to messages ever since the first fake stories of child kidnappings in 2018 led to lynchings. One of the government officials is quoted as saying, \u201cFingerprinting WhatsApp messages will help find the originator of the message. That is all we want\u2026 We don\u2019t want to read the messages but when we see a problematic message, we should be able to go to WhatsApp to help us trace the sender.\u201d The official added that the government believes what it is asking is \u201ctechnically possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The official also went on to clarify that it will only request the data in limited circumstances, but the worry is that once the technology exists to do so, it could easily be abused.<\/p>\n

WhatsApp has not commented on the government\u2019s request, but industry insiders have said that should it go along with the request the messaging app will have to redesign its entire architecture.<\/strong> At the moment, WhatsApp doesn\u2019t store this kind of data, so it\u2019d be a major change if it were to suddenly start harvesting it. Such a change would then most likely affect WhatsApp all over the globe and not just in India.<\/p>\n

\"WhatsApp
WhatsApp will likely have to make the change everywhere and not just in India<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If you\u2019re a privacy advocate, this is something that should be grabbing your attention. The change could have massive privacy implications all around the world. This means we\u2019re at a dangerous juncture here, but that global public opposition to the move could be the biggest thing standing in the way of the Indian government getting what it wants.<\/p>\n

The question remains then, how do you feel about your fingerprint being added to every message you send?<\/p>\n

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The Indian government is pressuring WhatsApp to fingerprint all messages so they can be more easily tracked<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9073,"featured_media":142893,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":0},"categories":[1015],"tags":[2806,1040,1624,1027,1043],"usertag":[790],"vertical":[],"content-category":[],"class_list":["post-142891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-app-subdomain-redirectionfingerprint","tag-messaging-apps","tag-privacy","tag-security","tag-whatsapp","usertag-whatsapp"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9073"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142891"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":325816,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142891\/revisions\/325816"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142891"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=142891"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=142891"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=142891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}