Error in WhatsApp View Once: Your self-deleting pictures can be seen by anyone

If you send your pictures, videos or voice messages via WhatsApp, they are stored forever on the recipient’s device. They could easily be seen by the wrong people or end up on the Internet without your consent. So that you can send media with personal content without worry, the View Once function was added to the messenger in 2021.

Similar to Snapchat, images and videos can only be viewed once after they are received. After that, they are automatically deleted. It is also not possible to take a screenshot of the media. At least, that is usually the case. A bug in View Once currently means that your recipients can save the media with a one-time view.

The security experts at Zengo discovered the bug more or less by chance during research. As they report, the problem was limited to WhatsApp’s web app. While media with a “self-destruct function” is displayed as such on the smartphone as usual, it can be converted into a regular image, video or voice message in the web version.

All that is required is to manipulate a flag in the URL before the media is opened. There is no additional security measure in WhatsApp Web, which is causing the manufacturer Meta to face a lot of criticism again.

The error represents a major intrusion into your privacy. Media that contains useful information such as passwords, private recordings or documents can be stored permanently. Depending on the type of content, you could quickly become a victim of blackmail. We therefore recommend that you refrain from using the View Once function until the error has been resolved.

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