In 2014, WhatsApp implemented end-to-end 256-bit encryption on Android mobile phones, making it possible for secure communications. At the time that this deal was announced, WhatsApp had 450 million users worldwide. WhatsApp’s popularity attracted the social media giant Facebook, which acquired WhatsApp in February 2014, to play a bigger role in the rapidly growing messaging market. In June 2013, WhatsApp had 250 million users and its user base keeps growing. WhatsApp was created in 2009 and since then has made international headlines by becoming one of the most popular standalone messaging platforms. Through this connection, the WhatsApp user can send and receive text, pictures, audio or video. WhatsApp functions by utilizing a mobile phone’s Internet or Wi-Fi connection. It is marketed as being an inexpensive alternative to carrier-billed text messaging. WhatsApp is a stand-alone, cross-platform messaging service for mobile phones. This article explores what legal teams need to know about accessing, preserving and extracting mobile data from WhatsApp, in light of recent news and privacy concerns. One such app taking the mobile device world by storm is WhatsApp. Each of these apps store content on the mobile device and function in slightly different manners, creating myriad data preservation, collection and privacy issues. Legal teams cannot forget that inter-application (“app”) chat communications may also contain relevant information. To make things complicated, mobile devices contain more than just email, text messages and photos - all fully discoverable in litigation and ripe for investigation. This includes understanding where applicable data resides in a mobile device and what common challenges are associated with accessing, preserving and extracting this data. Accordingly, today’s modern legal and technology professionals need to brush up on all things mobile.
Īnalyzing data from mobile devices is still uncharted territory for many in Legal and IT. Lange, KrolLDiscovery, Legaltech NewsĮditor’s note: t his article appeared in Legaltech News.