U.S. House staff banned from using WhatsApp

U.S. House of Representatives staff have reportedly been banned from using WhatsApp. Axios reports that the House's chief administrative officer informed employees on Monday that Meta's messaging app is now prohibited, citing security concerns.

"The Office of Cybersecurity has deemed WhatsApp a high-risk to users due to the lack of transparency in how it protects user data, absence of stored data encryption, and potential security risks involved with its use," the chief administrative officer wrote in an email sighted by Axios.

As such, House staff are now prohibited from having WhatsApp on any government device, or even accessing its browser version on such devices. Instead, they're being directed to alternatives such as Signal, Microsoft Teams, Amazon's Wickr, or Apple's iMessage and FaceTime.

Responding to the issue on X, Meta's communications director Andy Stone refuted such security concerns, claiming that members of the House and Senate both regularly use WhatApp.

"Messages on WhatsApp are end-to-end encrypted by default, meaning only the recipients and not even WhatsApp can see them," Stone wrote. "This is a higher level of security than most of the apps on the CAO's approved list that do not offer that protection."

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End-to-end encryption is a security measure which scrambles messages so they can only be deciphered by your intended recipient. Signal's end-to-end encryption is always enabled, which has helped it earn its reputation for being focused on privacy. iMessage, FaceTime and Wickr also appear to have this encryption on by default. The exception is Microsoft Teams, as users must enable its end-to-end encryption.

When reached for comment by Mashable, Meta reiterated Stone's statement.

Security concerns regarding apps used by government employees are nothing new. States such as New York and Texas have previously banned DeepSeek's AI app from government devices in several, while TikTok was banned from all federal devices in early 2023.