Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will deliver the opening speech introducing new privacy features from Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram at the Facebook F8 conference at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California on April 30, 2019.
Amy Osborne | AFP | Getty Images
On Tuesday, a group of attorneys general led by Texas filed a new antitrust case against Google. While the suit mainly focuses on Google’s dominance in ad technology, it also accuses the company of colluding with rival Facebook in several areas.
The complaint alleges, among other things, that Google has made a deal with Facebook subsidiary WhatsApp that gives Google access to WhatsApp message data, including texts, photos and videos.
However, Google says the claim is inaccurate and appears to be based on a misunderstanding about a backup feature that Google offers for WhatsApp and other messaging services to make it easier to transfer old messages to a new phone.
Shortly after Facebook acquired WhatsApp, Facebook signed an exclusive agreement with Google in 2015, giving Google access to millions of Americans ‘end-to-end encrypted WhatsApp messages, photos, videos and audio files,’ the filing said. Subsequent details about the match in the suit were heavily redacted.
A Google spokesperson told CNBC that the characterization of the lawsuit is incorrect, and that the deal is a basic feature of backing up messages so they sync from device to device. Google introduced the backup feature to help users transfer their texts, photos and videos from one phone to another, according to a 2015 blog post from Google. Google does not use the backup data to target ads, the spokesperson added.
WhatsApp has started using end-to-end encryption on all messages sent through its service from 2016. This means that messages can only be read by the sender and recipient. Hackers, legal authorities who access the messages via a subpoena, and even WhatsApp itself cannot read them.
But WhatsApp backups are not end-to-end encrypted, the company explains in an FAQ. Instead, while backups remain on Google Drive servers, Google can access the content of that data and produce it, for example, in response to a subpoena. Users can choose to enable WhatsApp backups.
On iPhones, WhatsApp can back up messages to iCloud, Apple’s cloud storage service. Those backups are also not encrypted.
The dispute over the point in the lawsuit is an example of how routine features like message backups can be cast as anti-competitive partnerships between major tech groups facing antitrust investigations. It’s a minor point in the lawsuit, which focuses more directly on alleged harm related to Google’s way of organizing ad auctions.
A WhatsApp representative declined to comment, but Alex Stamos, a former security manager at the company, suggested a similar interpretation.
“Facebook doesn’t have that data. The only explanation could be the optional WhatsApp backup, which is included in GDrive on Android (iCloud on iOS),” says Stamos tweeted.
– Jennifer Elias contributed to this story.