Meta ‘concerned’ by Iran telling citizens to stop using WhatsApp, spokesperson says

The messaging platform WhatsApp said Tuesday the company is “concerned” that the application will not be available to people in Iran after state television in the country urged users to delete the app. 

Iranian officials had warned people to stop using WhatsApp, Telegram and other “location-based applications,” accusing them of being Israel’s “main methods to identify and target individuals,” according to a report from the country’s state-run broadcaster IRIB earlier Tuesday.  

“We’re concerned these false reports will be an excuse for our services to be blocked at a time when people need them the most. All of the messages you send to family and friends on WhatsApp are end-to-end encrypted meaning no-one except the sender and recipient has access to those messages, not even WhatsApp,” a WhatsApp spokesperson said in a statement to CBS News. 

“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,” the WhatsApp spokesperson said. “We do not provide bulk information to any government. For over a decade, Meta has provided consistent transparency reports that include the limited circumstances when WhatsApp information has been requested.”

The claim made by Iran’s state broadcaster comes as the country’s Islamic regime appears to be cracking down on the public’s access to the internet, as the Israel-Iran conflict intensifies. 

Israel on Friday launched airstrikes targeting Iranian nuclear facilities, scientists and senior military commanders, to which Iran responded with dozens of ballistic missiles. The countries have exchanged waves of missile attacks in the days since. At least two dozen people have been killed in Israel, according to the Israeli military, and dozens have been injured. Tehran has said at least 224 people have been killed in Iran since Friday.

The internet monitoring group NetBlocks said its analysis showed a 75% reduction in internet usage across the country on Tuesday, data the group says “comes amid an escalating conflict with Israel and is likely to limit the public’s ability to access information at a critical time.” 

WhatsApp is owned by Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and Threads. Meta’s platforms have previously been targeted by Iran’s autocratic government during times of unrest in the country. In 2022, as the Iranian government faced widespread protests over the death of 22-year-old student Mahsa Amini while in Iranian police custody, Meta said Iranian authorities had clamped down on the use of Instagram in the country in an effort to suppress the ability of protesters to share information. 

While WhatsApp is an end-to-end encrypted app, it is not impenetrable. Just last month, the Israeli software company NSO Group was ordered to pay WhatsApp $167 million for hacking 1,400 people, including activists and journalists, in 2019. The hack involved the use of a malicious software called Pegasus, which can be installed remotely on cellphones to access, among other things, people’s microphones, cameras and GPS location settings.