WhatsApp advises users after group chat links seen again on Google search
Concerned at private group chat links being available on Google
Search, WhatsApp on
Monday said that they have asked Google not to index such chats and advised
users not to share group chat links on publicly accessible websites.
Google had indexed invite links to private WhatsApp group chats,
meaning anyone can join various private chat groups with a simple search.
The indexed WhatsApp group chat
links have now been removed from Google.
Independent cybersecurity researcher Rajshekhar Rajaharia on
Sunday shared screenshots with IANS showing indexing of WhatsApp group chat
invites on Google.
"Since March 2020, WhatsApp has included the
"noindex" tag on all deep link pages which, according to Google, will
exclude them from indexing. We have given our feedback to Google to not index
these chats," a WhatsApp spokesperson told IANS.
"Links that users wish to share privately with people they
know and trust should not be posted on a publicly accessible website," the
company spokesperson added..
The issue was first cropped up in February last year when app
reverse-engineer Jane Wong found that Google has around 470,000 results for a
simple search of "chat.whatsapp.com", part of the URL that makes up
invites to WhatsApp groups.
Journalist Jordan Wildon also discovered that WhatsApp's
"Invite to Group Link" feature lets Google index groups, making them
available across the internet since the links are being shared outside of
WhatsApp's secure private messaging service.
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