iStockBad news if you’re a WhatsApp user, as a new study suggests the company behind the messaging app actually stores a hell of a lot more of your personal info than you might think.
The study, carried out by researchers from the Brno University of Technology in the Czech Republic, found that the app collects your phone number and any details about the calls you make, and stores all the information on the WhatsApp computers back at HQ.
In theory, this could put users at risk of being hacked, although the researchers have stressed that the remote computers on which the details are stored are still not easy to hack into.
Even so, the research gives an interesting insight into the inner workings of the company which, up until now, had remained pretty secretive.
GettyResearchers created a tool which decrypted communications between an Android phone and WhatsApp’s servers in order to view messages exchanged on the app.
The researchers wrote:
Our research demonstrates the type of data that can be gathered through the forensic study of WhatsApp and provides a path for others to conduct additional studies into the network forensics of messaging apps.
So maybe be a bit more careful about what you send over WhatsApp in future – after all, we don’t want our private photos ending up as part of another ‘Fappening’ situation!
