The Narendra Modi government has rejected claims of issuing a guideline to monitor WhatsApp chats of people and take action against them.
The government's information wing Press Information Bureau tweeted through its fact-check handle, “A message circulating on social media claims the Government of India has released a new #WhatsApp guideline to monitor chats and take action against people. This message is #FAKE. The Government has released no such guideline.”
Currently, a single tick on WhatsApp shows that the message has been sent. A double tick means that the message has been delivered to the recipient and a blue tick signifies that the message has been read. The blue tick is optional and can be turned off by the user.
The message doing rounds on social media claimed that a three blue tick meant that the government had taken note. Two blue and a red tick meant that the government may take action against you. The PIB Fact check has rejected all these claims.
The messaging platform has already said that its messages are end-to-end encrypted. According to this feature, only the sender and the receiver can read or listen the message being sent and nobody in between including WhatsApp.
{{/usCountry}}The messaging platform has already said that its messages are end-to-end encrypted. According to this feature, only the sender and the receiver can read or listen the message being sent and nobody in between including WhatsApp.
{{/usCountry}}“ This is because with end-to-end encryption, your messages are secured with a lock, and only the recipient and you have the special key needed to unlock and read them. All of this happens automatically: no need to turn on any special settings to secure your messages,” WhatsApp said.
“Before a message ever leaves your device, it's secured with a cryptographic lock, and only the recipient has the keys. In addition, the keys change with every single message that's sent,” the messaging platform stated.