00:00:52.860And I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.
00:00:58.680I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.
00:01:02.260Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:01:09.820These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:01:13.640Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:21.260If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:01:27.400Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:01:35.640Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.
00:01:45.360Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:51.260There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.
00:02:03.480I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.
00:02:08.900Is WhatsApp reading your private, encrypted messages?
00:02:12.800This is what U.S. authorities are looking into this week.
00:02:16.120Now this comes after a lawsuit filed last week,
00:02:18.780which claims that Meta, the company that owns WhatsApp,
00:02:22.040can access virtually all of WhatsApp users' purportedly private communications.
00:02:27.200Now, according to The Guardian, the firm that filed the lawsuit against Meta
00:02:30.560attributes this allegation to unnamed, courageous whistleblowers
00:02:34.240from Australia, Brazil, India, Mexico, and South Africa.
00:02:38.480But Meta, surprise, surprise, is denying the allegations,
00:02:42.420calling the lawsuit's claim categorically false and absurd,
00:02:45.800and suggesting that the claim was a tactic to support the NSO Group,
00:02:51.600an Israeli cyber intelligence firm primarily known for its proprietary spyware called Pegasus,
00:02:57.140which can turn pretty much any smartphone into a surveillance device remotely.
00:03:02.140It's been used against activists and journalists and recently lost a lawsuit brought by WhatsApp.
00:03:07.800So what does all of this mean for you?
00:03:10.620Well, Meta is all about the idea that WhatsApp is a secure, encrypted, private platform.
00:03:16.240To the point where my friend Annie, one of the hosts of the podcast Stuff Mom Ever Told You,
00:03:20.840saw commercials suggesting that WhatsApp is a safe place to have conversations about topics as sensitive as your reproductive care.
00:03:29.020Which, to be clear, is not something I would recommend anybody do.
00:03:32.180And right now, the Trump administration is using every tool they have to force tech companies to turn over people's personal communications.
00:03:40.480In fact, just this morning, The Washington Post published an exclusive investigative report about how DHS is using subpoenas to quietly surveil and silence their political enemies.
00:03:50.760So that means that protecting your digital privacy is more important than ever, not just for you, but anyone in your network who might be more vulnerable than you are.
00:03:59.880Your friend who overstayed their visa, your cousin who got an out-of-state abortion, their safety depends on you.
00:04:07.720I broke down all of this earlier this winter with my friends, Samantha and Annie, over at the podcast Stuff Mom Never Told You.
00:04:19.780I feel a little bit guilty about this one, Bridget, because it was a big topic that I was like, you know what I would really love to discuss?
00:04:28.760this. And it's just a huge spiraling thing, complicated. But I really appreciate you
00:04:36.980bringing it. And I think it's really important. And I'm excited to talk about it and to learn
00:04:42.440more. So what are we discussing today? Today, we are diving into the wide world of privacy,
00:04:49.500specifically whether or not messaging apps like WhatsApp actually are private. And I know I can
00:04:57.040already hear somebody in their car or washing their dishes right now thinking snooze privacy
00:05:03.300has nothing to do with me i don't break the law i have nothing to hide whatever they have on me
00:05:08.840they already have it who cares that is actually a very common attitude called privacy nihilism
00:05:14.680where you just are like the government has all that they're gonna have on me it doesn't matter
00:05:18.640and honestly i get it most of us probably don't really think twice before you hit send on a
00:05:23.760message, right? But what if hitting send could put you at risk? And the truth is in 2025, it literally
00:05:30.860can. Whether you're texting about abortion or a protest or whatever, your messages could be
00:05:37.300watched, flagged, or even used against you. Privacy isn't just for people with something to hide.
00:05:42.480It is for people with something to lose. And right now in 2025, given everything that is going on,
00:05:49.440that is all of us yes and we're gonna get into this more but um it seems that companies at least
00:05:58.800have tapped into this this worry this concern and they're competing with each other in ad campaigns
00:06:05.980well annie you sent me this ad from whatsapp that in my opinion heavily implied that whatsapp is
00:06:12.160meant to be like a private secure messaging platform and that one could even trust it for
00:06:16.840a private conversation about health care like maybe if one was trying to pursue an abortion
00:06:21.360this would be a platform that you could do that securely you were also telling me about another
00:06:25.680ad from apple where it was like camera birds being launched at people or something yes yes
00:06:34.560that ad is very frightening everyone it reminds me of the black mirror episode with like the robot
00:06:40.060dogs oh yeah army robot dog that's like um like it's like the post-apocalyptic army robot killer
00:06:47.900dog oh my god yes but there's just these like cameras that have bird wings and they have this
00:06:55.500screeching sound they make and they fly after people on the street who are looking at their
00:07:00.460phone implying that like they're watching you if you're on your phone or on your laptop and they'll
00:07:05.200crash into windows and there's a really piercing sound it's really disturbing and then it's an ad
00:07:12.300for safari that's saying like other browsers watch you safari doesn't definitely they got their finger
00:07:20.900on the pulse and the pulse of the moment is concerned about our vast surveillance state
00:07:25.720that much is clear i think people are worried about it and these i think these companies are
00:07:30.420like oh let's tap into people's understandable concern about the surveillance state right now
00:07:36.020it's so odd though because like when i sent you that the whatsapp campaign it's it's strange to
00:07:44.360me in a way that we're living in such a dystopian world where there are ads that are like you don't
00:07:50.980want anyone to know about your medical like you don't want it just has this vibe of overall
00:07:58.740it's probably not safe for people to know about these things i don't know um which is true it's
00:08:06.080absolutely true but it's strange that it's in an ad campaign it's weird to get reminded of it while
00:08:11.680you're watching bob's burgers like i totally understand the way like it does feel rather
00:08:17.500dystopian i totally get it yes oh and i should say right off the top that i'm not like an online
00:08:26.300privacy expert. I don't work in IT. I would more call myself a privacy enthusiast. One of the
00:08:32.200projects that I work on, in addition to my own podcast, There Are No Girls on the Internet,
00:08:36.060is a podcast that I make with the Mozilla Foundation, the makers of the browser Firefox,
00:08:40.200called IRL. And it's a podcast all about technology, AI, ethics, and of course, privacy.
00:08:46.140We actually just launched our brand new season a few weeks ago, so folks should check it out.
00:08:50.640But what's interesting about the show, I think, is that we're really trying to make these conversations that might
00:08:56.300feel wonky or inaccessible, accessible for everybody. And I think that it's important
00:09:01.420for folks like me, who aren't necessarily privacy experts or don't work in IT, to have a sense of
00:09:06.540the privacy of the technology and the platforms that we do use every day. Like, we shouldn't
00:09:10.960treat those as conversations that are just for experts. And especially in 2025, when, as we were
00:09:16.300just discussing, the vibes, it's giving 1984 at times. It's giving dystopian. It's giving, you
00:09:24.680know something out of a scary novel only it's real that's i mean i don't know if that's how
00:09:29.880you all are feeling but that's how i'm feeling and so yeah privacy and the privacy around the
00:09:34.860apps that we use every single day becomes even more important yes and i know we're going to
00:09:40.040talk about it but we've seen instances of these apps turning over data that people thought was
00:09:47.900private um weren't thinking that it was going to be shared in this way so and you know i have to say
00:09:55.900whatsapp is a app that i only have experience generally with my international friends
00:10:01.580but i did always get this vibe that it was more secure than other other apps so when i saw this
00:10:09.760ad campaign what set me off was not whatsapp it's when i saw meta at the bottom of it
00:10:17.660And I was like, okay, wait, now, now I have a lot of concerns. Now I have a lot of concerns. So yeah, let's what's going on with WhatsApp here.
00:10:28.340So let's get into it. For folks who maybe don't know about WhatsApp, it is a free global messaging platform that was launched in 2009. And it allows folks to send texts, voice messages, video messages, make voice and video calls, share images, documents, user locations, and other content.
00:10:44.560It has over 2 billion, billion with a B, users.
00:10:48.880There are like 8 billion people on planet Earth.
00:13:54.540to examine certain messages, images, and videos
00:13:56.860that have been flagged by users as possibly abusive.
00:13:59.760And it turns over to law enforcement metadata
00:14:02.640death, including critical account and location information. So again, it really comes down to
00:14:08.880whether or not you consider that to be private. Yeah. And also given like a lot of other news
00:14:16.940that's happened with Meta and Mark Zuckerberg, that just reverses everything that they said
00:14:21.920they were going to do. So it's also, I feel an extension of that is, do I believe they're
00:14:31.020actually going to stick with this thing or are they just going to change it i mean i think it's
00:14:36.740reasonable to look at how companies historically have moved when they say things when they say
00:14:42.620one thing and then do the do the opposite i think all of that plays into the question of like whether
00:14:47.940or not you're comfortable with them having information about you that could potentially
00:14:51.880wind you in jail this is not a hypothetical we'll talk more about this in a moment but like
00:14:56.140That has happened. Conversations people had on Facebook platforms have led to them being in prison. So like, that's in my book, that's like you're giving quite a bit of trust to these platforms. And, you know, as I said, Meta owns Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and also works with a sprawling network of third parties and contractors, sometimes in like very opaque ways.
00:15:19.460And so my sense is that Meta is like, oh, well, WhatsApp itself is encrypted, so that means it's private. And then conveniently leave out that users who are concerned about their privacy might also be concerned about how and what data is then being shared with third parties.
00:15:34.460Like, I think that Facebook is like, well, we're encrypted.
00:15:50.740And it does feel very like, I don't know, kind of shuffling it.
00:15:55.540Like even going back to that ad, the meta symbol is very small in that ad, I have to say.
00:16:01.180I think they were like, well, you know, people know that we've gone through these scandals, but also kind of shuffling it off to the user of you should figure out this was on you.
00:16:13.560If you were worried about privacy, then I don't know why you didn't take whatever steps.
00:17:25.780If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:17:32.200This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters,
00:17:38.340pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:17:44.380I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:17:51.360I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.
00:17:54.540from best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments
00:17:59.520nothing is off the table it's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling
00:18:06.080characters and that is a trojan horse whether you're looking for literary deep dives smart
00:18:11.360pop culture conversations or a community of readers who love to think a little too much
00:18:16.100you're in the right place listen to pro society on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever
00:18:22.580you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held
00:18:29.980captive for nine months. I survived and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what
00:18:36.440should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart and these are the Survivor Files. I just remember
00:18:42.780this low taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. Every week I'm with0.97
00:18:51.660survivors who lived through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going
00:18:58.480to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed and I just started
00:19:05.160screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories
00:19:11.900about what's taken from them. They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:19:17.240Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:19:31.660I remember when WhatsApp was bought out and everybody was really upset because I think at that point, a lot of protests and like a lot of gatherings had happened through different messengers like WhatsApp because it was supposed to be encrypted.
00:19:43.980And then Facebook bought them out and everybody lost it.
00:19:46.580I remember people talking about what to do next.
00:19:49.020And that's when Signal kind of got its big boost, if I remember correctly.
00:19:52.360I mean, they've always been pretty big, but it got the bigger boost because WhatsApp eventually became known as now it can be Facebook.
00:19:58.260And then they were real quiet about it.
00:20:00.020They made sure not to change the brand or the logo.
00:20:03.340And they were just, I think, really hoping people would forget who owned WhatsApp.
00:20:08.200And I feel like the same way, like you were talking about, when people start clicking on doing the messengers and you get the little, you have to read this.
00:20:15.280this is our terms of service and no one reads that let's be real honest it's hard to even
00:20:19.740decipher i actually had a similar incident with like my loans and when everything was popping
00:20:24.880off about doge or doge uh doing those weird things and looking at the loans and everybody's
00:20:30.600coming up with hey that's illegal y'all told us if it gets breached by like organizations like this
00:20:36.320then our loans have to be forgiven my specific loan site came back with a whole agreement that
00:20:42.720It tells me, by the way, a third party can get access if given permission by blah, blah, blah.
00:28:14.860there are many there's a there's many many many at the last minute i was like well
00:28:20.900hacking is different than i mean it's not different than privacy i made a game day
00:28:26.200decision to be like let's let's exclude hacking from the conversation but i won't let you what's
00:28:31.400that be getting hacked like it's a real thing i mean if they want to say be you know like it's
00:28:36.560secure and private and all these things but like one goes in hand in hand how am i going to trust
00:28:40.640you if every other day I get a message from this person that's saying, hey, did you send me these
00:28:44.780things just because I opened an app and it turns out that someone has hacked into my account?
00:28:50.400Like, obviously, if you can't even get like the security to keep my stuff OK, how do you have the
00:28:57.080ability to keep it private? Exactly. Just and just to be super clear, even if WhatsApp, their
00:29:03.040encryption means that they cannot hand the content of your messages over to the police, if the police
00:29:09.040were trying to build a case against you that relied on location data, like say, did you travel
00:29:14.320to XYZ location to obtain an abortion and you live in a place where you were not legally permitted
00:29:19.920to travel across state lines to do so? Or like, were you at XYZ protest? WhatsApp has metadata.
00:29:26.520So even if they can't give you get the actual messages, they're fine giving metadata, which
00:29:31.100includes things like your location, your contacts, who you were messaging. They're fine to give that
00:29:36.300information over and so and they have that information and so it's really about understanding
00:29:40.580privacy in a more holistic way that it's not just about the content of your messages it's about how
00:29:46.420secure is this platform like is it easily hacked is it hackable does it have a history of being
00:29:50.760hacked you know what kind of metadata are they collecting how do they use that metadata it's
00:29:55.460really about asking all of these background questions in addition to just like how do they
00:29:59.980keep my content safe. Right. And on top of that, it's also there are some things, some laws that
00:30:10.500we have that sort of allow for them to be like, yeah, we can track you. Right. Yeah. So I learned
00:30:18.580this in doing the research for this episode that thanks to the Electronic Communications Privacy
00:30:23.400Act, they're basically able to track users without probable cause. In January 2022, an unsealed
00:30:29.720surveillance application revealed that WhatsApp started tracking seven users from China in November
00:30:34.2602021 based on a request from USDA investigators. The app collected data on who the users contacted
00:30:40.880and how often and when and how they were using the app. And this is reportedly not an isolated thing
00:30:47.180as federal agencies can use the Electronic Communications Privacy Act to covertly track
00:30:52.040users without submitting any probable cause or linking a user's number to their identity.
00:30:56.760And I should just add a sort of global note about this whole thing is that WhatsApp has two different platforms, regular WhatsApp and then WhatsApp Business that's meant for small businesses to communicate that was rolled out in 2018.
00:31:10.320Everything that I've said so far is really about regular WhatsApp.
00:31:13.760And that's because WhatsApp's business platform is actually less private.
00:31:19.480So, yeah, don't use that to talk about anything.
00:31:23.060That's not the way I thought that was going to go.
00:31:24.800well i mean it kind of makes sense because like if you're if you're a business entity
00:31:30.060you're communicating with so many different people in such a different way that like
00:31:33.720i kind of get where they're coming from there but i just wanted to say that in case someone's like oh
00:31:38.080i have what's that business like let me use it the way that bridget told me i should be using it
00:31:43.560like that's a whole different beast yeah i thought that was gonna be an upgrade
00:31:47.480was not definite downgrade not business class no because on a plane it's like better
00:33:06.440When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months.
00:33:11.680I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.
00:33:18.680I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files.
00:33:22.380I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything.
00:33:30.560Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.
00:33:34.700I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.
00:33:39.460I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.
00:33:47.000They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:33:50.960But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
00:33:54.420They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:33:58.060Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:34:05.840If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:34:12.720This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:34:24.900I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:34:32.020I'm going to have to look up this story.
00:34:35.200From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
00:34:41.940It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:34:49.100Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.
00:34:58.640Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:37:32.820And so Signal is generally considered to be more secure and private than WhatsApp due
00:37:36.680to its just general commitment to user privacy as a nonprofit and its open source nature.
00:37:43.260While WhatsApp uses end-to-end encryption, Signal goes further by not collecting any
00:37:48.680user metadata and being backed by this nonprofit organization, which generally does minimize
00:37:53.940the potential for that kind of data exploitation, right?
00:37:56.380And so whereas they're both using end-to-end encryption, WhatsApp does collect and share metadata. Signal does not. They don't collect any of that. So that is definitely the better platform if you're talking about anything at all sensitive. And honestly, it's just a platform that I use. Like most of my conversations are happening on Signal.
00:38:19.100mm-hmm i'm gonna insert this joke here uh unless you're dumb enough to send messages to the people0.99
00:38:25.820you're not supposed to be sending like you know top secret information to journalists0.99
00:38:29.980if you're listening pete hegseth we're talking about you and you know what makes me mad about
00:38:36.140that is that that was the probably for a lot of americans that was probably the first time they
00:38:42.040had ever heard about signal and signal is so awesome it's so great they have such a great
00:38:46.700like mission and it made me sad that the first encounter that a lot of people were having was
00:38:53.440with Pete Hegseth like completely misusing it and even in some of the reporting about that
00:39:00.100they were sort of trying to make it signals like mistake like oh like oh like what is this shadowy
00:39:06.860app that they were using and how could this happen and it's like no it signal didn't do anything
00:39:11.460wrong it was 100 user error right honestly i was really shocked that they use such a public
00:39:17.680like platform that is free i'm like you're the government don't you have your own kind of like
00:39:22.960chat application that you used within your own people like i don't this there's a lot i have
00:39:29.880questions about in this moment i can answer that question for you the answer is absolutely the
00:39:34.300united states government has spent lots and lots and lots of money to develop and use super secure
00:39:39.800messaging apparatus uh yeah signal is not the use case for this if you're if you're talking about
00:39:46.160like secret military plans i do i do love like i read the different conversations that were
00:39:52.720happening i can't remember who it was it might have been jd vance don't quote me on that who
00:39:57.060is like only responding in thumbs up emojis it's one of them that is like just stick a thumbs up
00:40:05.160there and they'll get the gist like I don't want to be in print on this one which looking back was
00:40:11.080probably a smart idea yeah the level of like comedy here is just like what is going on but
00:40:17.760it feels right it feels about right the disaster and doom and like a comedic form like yeah okay
00:40:23.620that's where we are sometimes you gotta laugh to keep from crying am I right it's true I have to
00:40:30.800admit to you all I wrote in a fan fiction lately I had a plot point about this whole thing because
00:40:37.360yes because I was trying to figure out how to make something that was incredibly stupid happen
00:40:43.980in the government and I was like well it already happened so I can point to real life evidence1.00
00:40:49.960and be like you know what I would have thought it was too too stupid oh my gosh but it did happen0.99