The House of Representatives has banned staff members from using WhatsApp on government devices. In an email, the House’s chief administrative officer (CAO) tells staffers that the Office of Cybersecurity “has deemed WhatsApp a high-risk” because of a “lack of transparency in how it protects user data, absence of stored data encryption, and potential security risks.”
The email says that congressional staff members can’t download or use the mobile, desktop, or web browser version of WhatsApp on any government device. “If you have a WhatsApp application on your House-managed device, you will be contacted to remove it,” the email reads.
Meta communications director Andy Stone pushed back against the decision in an X post, stating the company disagrees with the CAO’s characterization of WhatsApp “in the strongest possible terms.” Stone adds that messages on WhatsApp are end-to-end encrypted by default, meaning third parties — not even Meta, which owns the platform — can read them. “This is a higher level of security than most of the apps on the CAO’s approved list that do not offer that protection,” Stone writes.
The CAO’s message to staff recommended that they use other apps for communications instead, such as Microsoft Teams, Signal, iMessage, FaceTime, or the Amazon-owned messaging service Wickr. In January, a WhatsApp official said Israeli spyware company Paragon Solutions had targeted scores of its users, including journalists and members of civil society.
WhatsApp isn’t the only app not allowed by the House. It has also banned TikTok on government devices and put restrictions on the use of the free version of ChatGPT.