Bayern Munich will face Real Madrid in the first leg of the Champions League semifinal on Tuesday
football1 hour ago
Concerned at private group chat links being available on Google Search, WhatsApp on Monday said that they have asked Google not to index such chats and advised users not to share group chat links on publicly accessible websites.
Google had indexed invite links to private WhatsApp group chats, meaning anyone can join various private chat groups with a simple search.
The indexed WhatsApp group chat links have now been removed from Google.
Independent cybersecurity researcher Rajshekhar Rajaharia on Sunday shared screenshots with IANS showing indexing of WhatsApp group chat invites on Google.
“Since March 2020, WhatsApp has included the “noindex” tag on all deep link pages which, according to Google, will exclude them from indexing. We have given our feedback to Google to not index these chats,” a WhatsApp spokesperson told IANS.
“Links that users wish to share privately with people they know and trust should not be posted on a publicly accessible website,” the company spokesperson added..
The issue was first cropped up in February last year when app reverse-engineer Jane Wong found that Google has around 470,000 results for a simple search of “chat.whatsapp.com”, part of the URL that makes up invites to WhatsApp groups.
Journalist Jordan Wildon also discovered that WhatsApp’s “Invite to Group Link” feature lets Google index groups, making them available across the internet since the links are being shared outside of WhatsApp’s secure private messaging service.
The WhatsApp spokesperson further said that as a reminder, “whenever someone joins a group, everyone in that group receives a notice and the admin can revoke or change the group invite link at any time”.
Danny Sullivan, Google’s public search liaison, had tweeted earlier: “Search engines like Google & others list pages from the open web. That’s what’s happening here. It’s no different than any case where a site allows URLs to be publicly listed. We do offer tools allowing sites to block content being listed in our results.” — IANS
Bayern Munich will face Real Madrid in the first leg of the Champions League semifinal on Tuesday
football1 hour ago
Company’s mobile customer base grew 5.7% year-over-year to 8.7 million subscribers
telecom1 hour ago
UK foreign secretary says the proposal includes 40-day pause in fighting and release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners and Israeli hostages
world1 hour ago
Egypt, Qatar and the United States have been trying to mediate an agreement between Israel and Hamas for months
mena1 hour ago
Artistic swimming started to flourish in the UAE after the World League was hosted in December last year at the Hamdan Sports Complex
sports1 hour ago
Countries are distancing itself from the developed economies with the intent to safeguard their own sovereign interest
personal finance2 hours ago
Food safety authorities in Hong Kong and Singapore banned four spice products from popular Indian brands after finding they contained a harmful substance
uae2 hours ago
An unidentified woman, claiming to be the basis for the series character, expressed her intention to pursue legal action against the creators
entertainment2 hours ago