Elon Musk Issues Crucial Security Warning, Crypto Community in Doubt
Controversial tech billionaire Elon Musk has published a tweet to warn users of messaging apps about a critical issue they face. Musk’s message was about WhatsApp as he shared his distrust toward it.
However, opinions of the crypto community on this matter have split, with many sharing Elon Musk’s concern while a lot of X users, with some major crypto influencers among them, doubted that this concern is real.
Elon Musk's WhatsApp warning
Musk tweeted that WhatsApp application for messaging transfers private user data regularly — “every night.” He also noted that some users still believe that this messaging app is secure.
Tether and VanEck’s strategic advisor Gabor Gurbacs doubted Musk’s words, referring to the fact that all messages on WhatsApp are supposed to be protected by end-to-end encryption. However, a video shared by Musk in his tweet confirms that WhatsApp activates user phone’s microphones even at night in their bedrooms to transmit all this “encrypted” data at night to the company’s servers.
WhatsApp is owned by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, and this tech billionaire already has a damped reputation for selling user private data to advertisers.
Several other X users also asked Musk in the comments if he had definitive evidence of WhatsApp leaking users’ personal data — photos, calls, text messages, audio messages. Among them was entrepreneur John Carmack with a million followers on X.
Many, however, supported Musk, sharing his concerns.
"Black Mirror" warning comes from Elon Musk
Earlier this week, as covered by U.Today, owner of X and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX Elon Musk commented on a new AI feature presented by Microsoft. The corporation presented Recall built into its AI assistant called Co-Pilot.
Recall is designed to take regular screenshots of all user activity on PCs and laptops. According to the clarification provided by the Microsoft CEO, users may want to search through those screenshots later to recall what they had been doing on their device earlier. He assured that all this data will not be exported from their computers to Microsoft databases.
Elon Musk criticized this innovation, likening it to one of the episodes of the popular dystopian film series Black Mirror. Ripple CTO and Vitalik Buterin also questioned the purposes of creating this feature voiced by the Microsoft CEO.