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Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices
- ranger_danger 1y agoAnyone have a non-captcha-looped source?
- geor9e 1y agoIt's the Associated Press, so googling the headline will reveal hundreds of syndicates. Same for Reuters.
- zeroq 1y agoSounds like a psyop article designed to make you feel like wanting to keep WhatsApp yourself. xD
- Lordarminius 1y agoAll the major social media and messaging platforms are compromised and serve as tools for surveillance, so the Iranian government isn't wrong.
- ranger_danger 1y agoSource:
- Lordarminius 1y ago[flagged]
- fuzzer371 1y ago[flagged]
- hypeatei 1y agoFISA, Room 641A, Patriot Act.
- Synaesthesia 1y agoThe Snowden leaks revealed the PRISM program, whereby major tech companies like Facebook, Apple etc all collaborate with the US government. No reason to believe that's still not in place.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Jackpillar 1y ago[flagged]
- ty6853 1y agoIraq and Gaza was an absolute joke compared to what it would take to topple the Iranian militants, militias, and government. Much of the terrain is similar to Afghanistan. Tribal islamic alliances are resilient against loss of central governance. There is a massive porous mountainous border to 2+ countries that conceivably will look the other way for certain islamic militants. I know everyone wants to gobble down the campaign about complete air superiority and toppling of leaders, and that WhatsApp may be separating the regime from 52 virgins, but realize this is a propaganda campaign. This initial propaganda only serves to manufacture consent long enough to buy citizens in to blood so they can't back out. We're in the process of being tricked.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> Iraq and Gaza was an absolute joke compared to what it would take to topple the Iranian militants, militias, and government It wouldn't be a cake walk. But America could topple the government in Tehran about as easily as it did in Baghdad or, frankly, Kabul. The problem in Iraq and Afghanistan wasn't a failure to decapitate the opposing state. It was in filling the vacuum that left.
- msgodel 1y agoWhy are we toppling all these foreign governments and creating instability that breads terrorism in places that otherwise have nothing to do with us? This seems so exceptionally counter productive.
- fortzi 1y agoIRGC is known for funding and training militant and terrier groups globally. They also call for the annihilation of the Big Satan (USA) and the Small Satan (Israel). All the while running for The Bomb. I wouldn’t call the present sutuation stable.
- msgodel 1y agoOh no! Mean words! Anyway we have plenty of people here that hate the US and are far more likely to actually create a problem. Furthermore I'd argue the deficit spending (a very large portion of which is defense) is a much more serious existential threat.
- mkoubaa 1y agoNot wrong, but Meta in particular is uniquely compliant to the wishes of state actors.
- selivanovp 1y agoIf Meta is compliant, there’s no point t believe that any other USA based corp is any better.
- rdrd 1y agoI find the wordsmithery on Meta's statement the most interesting: “We do not track your *PRECISE* location, we don’t keep logs of who everyone is messaging and we do not track the *PERSONAL* messages people are sending one another," it added. “We do not provide *BULK* information to any government.”
- msgodel 1y agoI wonder if the people of Iraq have an intuitive understanding of just how much more useful the information Facebook does track is like we do.
- Saris 1y agoIf you read around their points, it sounds like they track general location, log group messages, and provide specific information on request to a government.
- changoplatanero 1y agoI think group messages would still be considered personal. It would only be messages you send to a business or in a group with a business that wouldn't be personal.
- cess11 1y agoThey're under the CLOUD Act, doesn't matter what their policies say.
- orthecreedence 1y agoPRISM too.
- chgs 1y agoAren’t groups end-end encrypted still, with key exchange on joining groups?
- bravoetch 1y agoAnyone in Iran that can comment on this? What are citizens there thinking about WhatsApp?
- cess11 1y agoI don't know but they have local alternatives, the iranians have a bridge protocol that federates several services: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_Exchange_Bus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_Exchange_Bus
- demarq 1y agoI’m guessing there’s no encryption?
- cess11 1y agoIf you want actual security, don't use a phone and run your own server, likely Matrix.
- yuvalr1 1y agoSecurity strength is not a binary measure, there are many levels of security between "no encryption at all" to "run your own server".
- cess11 1y agoNot really in the space we're discussing, i.e. usian and iranian everyday phone applications. Small private actors aren't going to pop the TLS on messages anyway, and the states involved have or can compromise the system as such.
- MoonGhost 1y agoOr endnode in Tor. Not sure it's secure enough against US which operates it.
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- soccstyleway 1y ago[flagged]
- almosthere 1y agoWhich means one thing: The people will absolutely keep using WhatsApp, as they hate their gov.
- twodave 1y agoWhatsApp is already banned in Iran. It's difficult to see this as anything but another attempt by them to gain control over private communications involving their own people. To me, the most interesting thing about this conflict is the side-choosing of the other nations, because that reveals what kind of games they're playing.
- flyinglizard 1y ago> the most interesting thing about this conflict is the side-choosing of the other nations Could you elaborate on that? Is anyone behaving out of the totally expected?
- MoonGhost 1y agoRussia and China totally expected, they don't help much. Except for Turkey NATO on Israel's side, not surprising. Iraq open sky used for airstrikes. Muslim 'allies' probably help refueling Israelis planes. The rest of the world doesn't care much.
- miloignis 1y agoThe article mentions the ban was lifted late last year: "It banned WhatsApp and Google Play in 2022 during mass protests against the government over the death of a woman held by the country’s morality police. That ban was lifted late last year. ( https://apnews.com/article/iran-social-media-whatsapp-google-d886b47c427f33f96fb85e7c78d0b831 https://apnews.com/article/iran-social-media-whatsapp-google... ) "
- yuvalr1 1y agoI'm surprised reading that the Iranian's regime concerns are centered on WhatsApp sharing information with Israel. It is much more likely that WhatsApp have 0-day vulnerabilities used by the Mossad to gain the info than WhatsApp actively sharing it.
- jonplackett 1y agoThey are probably concerned it would be the platform of choice to communicate during a revolution that Israel is outspokenly trying to foment.
- grafmax 1y ago[flagged]
- jekwoooooe 1y ago[flagged]
- spaceribs 1y agoYeah! Get your head out of the gutter grafmax! Starving an entire population is totally if not morally equivalent to feeling nominally threatened.
- archagon 1y agoWhat about the threat of getting blown up by a tank while waiting in an aid line? https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-tank-shelling-kills-45-people-awaiting-aid-trucks-gaza-ministry-says-2025-06-17/ https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-tank-shell...
- yuvalr1 1y ago> Iran banned WhatsApp and Google Play in 2022 during mass protests against the government So more than fearing Israel, they actually fear the public that has an encrypted communication channel that can't be tapped by their police. Explains a lot.
- Jotalea 1y agoThere's another country that asked its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices too. That's right, I'm talking about Venezuela, the country led by Nicolás Maduro, a dictator. This immediately raised red flags for me.
- sergiomattei 1y agoIran being an authoritarian regime is not new.
- platevoltage 1y agoMaybe Mark should just open up his pocketbook for Maduro and the Iatola like he did for Trump.
- CommanderData 1y agoThere's good reason to believe lots of western apps have back doors, if not backdoors served to countries like Iran from app stores. Also car tech and cameras. Literally a wet dream if I worked at a three letter agency, real time surveillance of streets which is actually extremely difficult normally. Can't think of how many times I've wanted a recent picture of a street or house miles away, with 360 car cameras you can track people, see changes maybe from just minutes ago. I don't know why these countries don't block or mandate these features are completely turned off.
- bevr1337 1y ago> There's good reason to believe lots of western apps have back doors A common sentiment in this thread. My gut and practical experience both tell me this is true on some level, but how do folks distinguish tinfoil hat conspiracy from legitimate speculation?
- CommanderData 1y agoProbably because it's fairly difficult to detect. I doubt the code imports backdoor.dll. The UK now has laws to gag domestic companies and force them to implement backdoors.
- mousethatroared 1y agoAnd Australia has a law forcing its citizens, around the world, to code in backdoors.
- BLKNSLVR 1y agoThe fact that both parties were on the same side of this argument just sickens me. Same with metadata retention. I vote thusly.
- mousethatroared 1y agoIts funny how everyone's forgotten about that law
- mupuff1234 1y agoI'd like to think that it's because WhatsApp is adding ads.
- rasz 1y ago9 out of 10 dentists recommend overthrowing your oppressive regime.
- pier25 1y agoIsrael doesn't even need Whatsapp to be installed. The IDF's Unit 8200[1] can probably hack most phones in Iran. And if not any of the private companies selling spyware software like the NSO Group[2 and 3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_8200 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_8200 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSO_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSO_Group [3] https://mepc.org/commentaries/israeli-cyber-companies-overview/ https://mepc.org/commentaries/israeli-cyber-companies-overvi...
- monero-xmr 1y agoI had a coworker from Iran and he said every single computer just runs the same cracked Windows XP version translated into Farsi. Easy to exploit
- pier25 1y agoNo wonder they got into Natanz with stuxnet. I recommend the documentary Zero Days from 2016 to anyone remotely interested on this.
- _zagj 1y ago> No wonder they got into Natanz with stuxnet. While the PCs used to program the PLCs were running XP, the 0-day that Stuxnet exploited affected all versions of Windows, at least from 2000 onwards, including 2008 and Vista. EDIT: to clarify, the PCs "programmed" the PLCs indirectly, in that while they ran the Siemans STEP 7 IDE to design the centrifuges' control process, the resulting PLC programs were manually transported to the PLCs via USB devices, so there were two airgaps: the XP-running PCs airgapped from the outside world, and then another airgap between the PCs and the PLCs they programmed.
- dijit 1y agoThis massively trivialises how sophisticated stuxnet was, there were multiple 0-days affecting all versions of actively maintained versions of Windows being weaponised by the program. It wasn’t a bunch of known vulnerabilities affecting unpatched machines. Quite the opposite.
- lordofgibbons 1y ago> WhatsApp uses end-to-end encryption, meaning a service provider in the middle can’t read a message. I wish this meme that "whatsapp is secure because it uses e2e encryption" would die. Why does it matter if the messages are e2e encrypted if the messages are managed on the two ends of the channel by a closed source binary that does who-knows-what. The whatsapp app itself sees the clear text message. What it does with that information... or what "metadata" it extracts to send to their servers.. who knows.
- simpaticoder 1y agoI think the real reason people don't take supply chain endpoint security seriously is that it too quickly regresses to distrust of the OS and hardware. At that point you abandon smartphones entirely.
- SecretDreams 1y ago> At that point you abandon smartphones entirely. Right into my veins
- stefan_ 1y agoThats the paranoid answer. The much simpler answer is that you don't maintain the software on it; updates are done silently by whatever the hardware vendor decides passes their muster (or motive).
- Am4TIfIsER0ppos 1y agoYou should! They are government surveillance devices that broadcast their position at all times along with every bit of data they gather from their array of sensors: gyro, mic, camera, radio
- ajross 1y ago> Why does it matter if the messages are e2e encrypted if the messages are managed on the two ends of the channel by a closed source binary that does who-knows-what. Would you prefer your dissident messages be read by Meta Corporation or the Islamic Republic of Iran? That's the difference. No, there's no technical difference in the sense that neither solution can be verified to be probably secure vs. third party inspection. But in the real world the specifics of who the actors are are and the tactics they are known to employ are absolutely part of the threat model.
- lenerdenator 1y agoAll of this to avoid saying "We'd be fine with you existing within your pre-1967 borders."
- JumpCrisscross 1y agoDo you see an out for Khamenei et al? They can’t credibly dismantle their nuclear deterrent and expect to keep their heads. Israel and America cannot accept it, particularly now that its conventional defences have been shown ineffective. The classic approach, airlifting the Ayatollah to a dacha in Moscow while the IRGC saves face and plots a forever path to new elections, falls apart when you consider how Iran’s internal security and geopolitical alignment would need to be sculpted in a way that would satisfy the great powers. (Iranian crude fuels China’s refineries.)
- krisoft 1y ago> They can’t credibly dismantle their nuclear deterrent Mainly because they don’t have one and never had one. Hard to dismantle something you don’t have. Even harder to do so credibly. They had programs to obtain a nuclear deterrent. They can dismantle those programs. But they never had the actual nuclear deterrent itself.
- JumpCrisscross 1y agoSure, I mean that Khamenei can’t come out and say he’s shutting down enrichment, letting in the IAEA, actually do it and expect to stay in charge.
- lenerdenator 1y agoThey’re sure refining a lot of material for a country that doesn’t have any plans for putting any of it in a nuclear or radiological weapon.
- krisoft 1y agoThat's the program you are talking about, not the deterrent. You are mixing up "working on opening a bakery" with "having bread". They are related, but not the same.
- rasz 1y agoDelete this app that lets you organize aka "please dont overthrow us".
- meepmorp 1y agoyeah, Israel don't need WhatsApp chats to bomb shit, this is about internal threats.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- lxgr 1y agoLots of largely baseless speculation here about WhatsApp MITMing end-to-end encrypted chats and other hypotheticals, when the most likely government access path is right there in the open: WhatsApp heavily nudges users into backing up their chats to iCloud or Google Drive. These backups are, by default, unencrypted (or at least encrypted using a key known to Meta). And most users just use the defaults. It's exactly the same story with iMessage: If "iCloud Backup" and "iMessage in the cloud" are activated (again, Apple nudges users into these by default), all received messages get uploaded to Apple using a key available to Apple, unless "Advanced Data Protection" is also enabled (decidedly not the default). Users can deviate from these defaults (and both parties to a conversation need to, for the conversation to actually be private!), but they can already also just use Signal if sufficiently motivated.
- throw123xz 1y agoI mean, from a security point of view, those related to the government should use something they control. This goes for all countries. For the population in general though and in special those who don't like the people in charge of the country, WhatsApp is a great tool. I have to worry about WhatsApp and Meta as I'm in the "west", but there's no chance in hell Meta's going to provide data on any user to the Iranian government... it's a good option for Iranians.
- ppnpm 1y agoI wish that to happen to everybody
- tehjoker 1y agoThinking of all the people in Gaza that are communicating on WhatsApp while being basically defenseless against assassination or massacre by Israel unless they are a resistance fighter that's underground (in which case they use a wired internal phone network).
- Zaylan 1y agoI’m not sure if Iran’s claim is true, but honestly, I’ve always felt uneasy about what these apps actually log. End-to-end encryption is great, but it doesn’t protect metadata. The real issue is that we’re still guessing. Does anyone actually feel confident about any of this?
- BLKNSLVR 1y agoNope. If Meta is involved they're getting their beak wet in as many ways as they can. Promoting the fact that WhatsApp has "end to end encryption" may be true, but that just means all the other good, privacy promoting, consumer-oriented things they could also be doing: they're not doing.
- bawolff 1y agoI kind of suspect this is more a desperate regime on the brink of (at least military) collapse grasping at straws. Potentially they might be worried about anti-regime activists organizing on whatsapp and want to push people to more easily monitoriable alternatives. If iran knew meta was doing this for a long time, then it raises the question of why they are just asking people to delete it now. One would presume that such a serious opsec issue would require immediate action. If they just figured this out right now, its a bit hard to imagine how that happened given how disruptive the bombing campaign has been. The timing just seems really suspicious to me.
- jiggawatts 1y agoThis is the real reason. The leadership has been decapitated, and those still alive are fleeing or hiding in bunkers. This is the perfect time for an uprising. The Kurds are already starting whatever they’ve been planning.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- 4gotunameagain 1y agoOr, it is a country at war that was initiated unjustly by a third party that has the support of the US, and they're doing all they can to survive. Why trust a US company when the US helped Israel attack Iran while in negotiations ?
- bawolff 1y agoThe morality of the situation is kind of beside the point. Iran is either being truthful or they are not. That doesn't change regardless of if they are the side of good or the side of evil. > Why trust a US company when the US helped Israel attack Iran while in negotiations ? Potentially. However given that whatsapp/meta is just one random american company that is already banned in Iran (afaik) it seems like that would be a really random action if it was purely about retaliating against usa.
- 1y ago
- smolder 1y agoBut don't delete signal because you might get invited to an inner circle war strategy conversation.
- WhereIsTheTruth 1y agoIt's interesting how the narrative about Iran is changing, WhatsApp?!, i thought they were still living in the middle age under a totalitarian dictatorship and with no access to technology whatsoever /s "Asks" instead of banning? yet the US wants to ban TikTok Israel will be US/UK's scapegoat, they'll pretend they are the good guy while they force Israel into a war nobody wants
- turntable_pride 1y agoNow they're asking instead of demanding lol
- andy_ppp 1y agoI’m surprised Iran has WhatsApp at all tbh.
- bjoli 1y agoIt doesn't. It has been blocked for years. There was talk about lifting a ban in late 2024, but everyone I know there still use VPNs to use it.
- statuslover9000 1y agoThis makes sense. Israel seems to have used WhatsApp metadata to target Palestinians in Gaza: https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/ https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/ > The solution to this problem, he says, is artificial intelligence. The book offers a short guide to building a “target machine,” similar in description to Lavender, based on AI and machine-learning algorithms. Included in this guide are several examples of the “hundreds and thousands” of features that can increase an individual’s rating, such as being in a Whatsapp group with a known militant, changing cell phone every few months, and changing addresses frequently.
- ta20240528 1y agoMost people would rather change their religion than delete WhatsApp.
- pbiggar 1y agoThis is no surprise. I raised the flag last year on Whatsapp being used as part of the genocide in Gaza [1] following the +972 article [2] on Lavender. This was an opportunity for Meta to signal that it wasn't in support of its technologies being used this way, to do top-to-bottom public audit of how this came to be and to prevent it from ever happening again. Instead, Meta had an incredibly scummy response [3]. They said that "WhatsApp has no backdoors". A "backdoor" and a vulnerability are different, and Meta at the time knew [4] that it had a vulnerability which could have been used in that exact situation (since all Gazan telecoms are surveilled by Israel). Given Meta's senior leadership is pro-Israel, with their CISO being former Israeli intelligence, and with them massively putting their thumb on the scales to shut down pro-Palestinian activism [5][6][7][8] (including shutting down dissent of it internally [9]). Now, Meta is aligning with the US military [10], and with the Trump administration [11] which is trying to support a war against Iran that Israel started. Literally any country which is not US/West aligned should be actively moving their citizenry off Meta. [1] https://blog.paulbiggar.com/meta-and-lavender/ https://blog.paulbiggar.com/meta-and-lavender/ [2] https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/ https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/ [3] https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240418-israel-using-metas-whatsapp-to-kill-palestinians-in-gaza-through-ai-system/ https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240418-israel-using-meta... [4] https://theintercept.com/2024/05/22/whatsapp-security-vulnerability-meta-israel-palestine/ https://theintercept.com/2024/05/22/whatsapp-security-vulner... [5] https://7amleh.org/storage/meta/Erased%20and%20Suppressed%20-1812.pdf https://7amleh.org/storage/meta/Erased%20and%20Suppressed%20... [6] https://theintercept.com/2024/10/21/instagram-israel-palestine-censorship-sjp/ https://theintercept.com/2024/10/21/instagram-israel-palesti... [7] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c786wlxz4jgo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c786wlxz4jgo [8] https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/report-alleges-meta-facilitated-israeli-led-crackdown-on-pro-palestinian-content-inc-co-response/ https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/report-a... [9] https://7amleh.org/storage/Advocacy%20Reports/Delete%20the%20issue-11.11.pdf https://7amleh.org/storage/Advocacy%20Reports/Delete%20the%2... [10] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/us-army-tech-executives/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/us-army-tech-executives/ [11] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8j9e1x9z2xo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8j9e1x9z2xo
- seethishat 1y agoIf I told you 50 years ago, "Hey, we're going to build a worldwide surveillance network and make the people we are tracking pay for it", you would not have believed me. But that is what happened. Cell phones.
- joshstrange 1y agoYes, because the sole reason someone would possess a cell phone is to be tracked, with no other legitimate reason for wanting a cell or smartphone at all. /s While tracking is an unfortunate consequence, cell phones and smartphones have become indispensable aspects of our daily lives. We can lament their prevalence or highlight their negative impacts, but reducing cell phones to “tracking devices people pay for” is an overly simplistic view IMHO.
- defrost 1y agoHardly indispensable, it just feels that way to many.
- amai 1y agoTiktok is much safer!
- AlecSchueler 1y agoWhy isn't this flagged? Surely this is politics.
- AnimalMuppet 1y agoPolitics, yes, but: 1. Politics has been getting more freedom here lately, especially if it's the first story about something new. This is, as far as I can see, the first story about this. 2. The story has an interesting technical component, about encryption, privacy, and tracking - things that a lot of HN users care about. 3. It mostly hasn't deteriorated into a flamefest.
- AlecSchueler 1y agoPolitics hasn't been getting more freedom here lately, though, that was my sarcastic point. Every day there's a bunch of stuff flagged off of the front page for being only tangentially related to contemporary American politics yet this gets the thumbs up. It's indicative of people trying to quell certain types of political conversation only. Number two on your list shouldn't apply because we've seen many technical articles about Tesla, DOGE, etc flagged in the past months 3 shouldn't apply either because we lose posts every day just because they have the "potential" for flaming.
- thrance 1y agoEverything is political.
- bryan_w 1y agoI bet North Korea would ask the same thing.
- mersorion 1y agoI totally share the concern about “secure” messengers leaking plaintext not due to encryption failures, but through archives, relays or vendor-controlled exports. As someone pointed out in this thread - “There’s always an attempt to ‘secure the system’... but E2EE alone doesn’t guarantee safety.” What really matters is modeling real world threats and minimizing risk at every point in the system. That’s where GOSPL.CHAT stands out. It was designed with context-aware security from the ground up, with critical safeguards like: No plaintext ever accessible to intermediaries or vendors Zero-knowledge archives, where only the end user can decrypt their data No export features or backdoors that can be exploited These protections mean that even if infrastructure is breached or supply chains are compromised, user data remains unreadable. GOSPL doesn’t just promise encryption — it ensures resilience in the face of real threats. That’s the level of trust we actually need.