> 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
(Of course that statement seems to be highly confused overall. What "stored data encryption"?)
I was of the impression that Whatsapp’s messages (and its backups, photos, etc) kind of just hung around in plaintext once they reached the device.
Which would seem to be a problem should the device be stolen, or observed by other applications on the phone or a tethered device, or twiddled with sneaky hardware (e.g. [0]) that might use physical means to access the device’s file system.
Although as I understand it, the privacy claims are kind of window dressing anyway, and Meta has been more than willing to share plenty of WhatsApp’s data with all and sundry… even before AI-in-the-same-search-bar came along [1]
[0] https://shop.hak5.org/products/omg-cable
[1] https://www.propublica.org/article/how-facebook-undermines-p...
Which is an anti-feature given this application: you want a certain level of oversight and control over what staffers communicate.