How Government Agencies Recover Deleted Data And Private WhatsApp Chats Despite 'End-To-End Encryption'?

WhatsApp offers its customers end-to-end encryption in its chats which means that the messages are visible only to the sender and the recipient, and no third party can access it, not even WhatsApp.

(Representative Image/ Getty)

The mysterious death case of Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput has recently sparked a debate across various spectrums such as nepotism, drugs nexus in film industries and role of social media and other messaging platforms in the entire fiasco. Ever since the central investigating agencies CBI, ED and NCB have cloned the mobile phones of Rhea Chakraborty and others, several WhatsApp chats of film stars have made to the headlines. With this, several concerns of the general public have brewed up over the safety of WhatsApp chats. People have started questioning how the third party (NCB in this case) is able to recover the deleted data and WhatsApp chats of the film stars despite End-To-End Encryption? 'Not even WhatsApp can access chats': WhatsApp Spokesperson WhatsApp offers its customers end-to-end encryption in its chats which means that the messages are visible only to the sender and the recipient, and no third party can access it, not even WhatsApp. WhatsApp issued a clarification stating that the messages are always protected with the end-to-end encryption. In a statement issued on Thursday, WhatsApp spokesperson said, "only you and the person you're communicating with can read what is sent, and nobody in between can access it, not even WhatsApp." "WhatsApp follows guidance provided by operating system manufacturers for on-device storage and we encourage people to take advantage of all the security features provided by operating systems such as strong passwords or biometric IDs to prevent third parties from accessing content stored on device," the messaging platform said, as quoted by IANS. How Do Govt Investigating Agencies Access Deleted WhatsApp Chats? It must be noted that the media and message back-up on Google Drive or any such Cloud services aren't protected by WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption. And that is why, the agencies like CBI or NCB can easily access the deleted or the encrypted WhatsApp chats. Moreover, the agencies use complex software mechanism to clone all the data of your mobile phone onto a different mobile phone. This is basically calling cloning or imaging, through which, all the data of your phone can be copied to another system.