A United Nations spokesperson, Farhan Hag, on Thursday revealed that officials of the UN were banned from using encrypted messaging service WhatsApp.
According to the spokesperson,"The senior officials at the UN have been instructed not to use WhatsApp, it's not supported as a secure mechanism." Hag said on Thursday after UN experts accused Saudi Arabia of using WhatsApp to hack the phone of Amazon's chief executive and owner of Washington Post, Jeff Bezos.
Also Read: Billions Of Android Users On WhatsApp And Telegram Can Be Easily Hacked With This Security Flaw, Do This To Save Yourself
Following the attack on Bezo which happened in 2018, accusing fingers have been pointing at Saudi Arabia 's crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman. On Wednesday, independent UN experts said they had information that pointing to the "possible involvement" of Prince Mohammed Bin Salman in the attack on the Amazon's chief.
A forensic report by Washington-based FTI Consulting said a malicious video file was sent from the WhatsApp account of Prince Mohammed Bin Salman which hijacked Bezos iPhone.
When asked if the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had used WhatsApp to communicate with the Saudi Arabia crown prince or any world leader, Hag said no.
"So no, i do not believe the Secretary-General uses it," Hag said, later adding that the directive not to use WhatsApp was given to UN officials in June last year.
However, WhatsApp in return says that it provides industry leading security which is seen as the best by security experts around the world for its over 1.5 billion users.
"Every private message is protected by end-to-end encryption top help prevent WhatsApp or others from viewing chats," WhatsApp Director of Communication Carl Woog said. "The encryption technology that we developed with Signal is highly regraded by security experts and remain the best available for people around the world."
You might want to ask yourself whats safe if a secured encrypted service like WhatsApp is being singled out by the UN as a non "secure mechanism."