Meta’s widespread messaging app, WhatsApp, has been banned from the U.S. Home of Representatives, the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) Catherine Szpindor advised employees there on Monday.
“The Workplace of Cybersecurity has deemed WhatsApp a high-risk to customers as a result of lack of transparency in the way it protects consumer knowledge, absence of saved knowledge encryption, and potential safety dangers concerned with its use,” the electronic mail stated, seen by Axios.
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The word stated the app is banned from all authorities gadgets, together with telephones and computer systems.
“Home employees are NOT allowed to obtain or hold the WhatsApp software on any Home gadget, together with any cell, desktop, or net browser variations of its merchandise,” the e-mail added. “When you have a WhatsApp software in your Home-managed gadget, you can be contacted to take away it.”
In the meantime, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone responded on X that the tech big disagrees “within the strongest potential phrases.”
“We all know members and their staffs repeatedly use WhatsApp and we sit up for guaranteeing members of the Home can be part of their Senate counterparts in doing so formally,” Stone wrote.
Messages on WhatsApp are end-to-end encrypted by default, which means solely the recipients and never even WhatsApp can see them. It is a increased degree of safety than many of the apps on the CAO’s accepted record that don’t provide that safety.
— Andy Stone (@andymstone) June 23, 2025
“Messages on WhatsApp are end-to-end encrypted by default, which means solely the recipients and never even WhatsApp can see them,” Stone added. “It is a increased degree of safety than many of the apps on the CAO’s accepted record that don’t provide that safety.”
Szpindor advised CNBC in a written assertion that “defending the Folks’s Home is our topmost precedence,” and this was enacted after “monitoring and analyzing for potential cybersecurity dangers that would endanger the info of Home Members and employees.”
It is not the primary tech ban that the CAO has enacted, both. ChatGPT is restricted, and there have been full and partial bans on a number of instruments and apps, together with DeepSeek, TikTok, and Microsoft Copilot.
Meta’s widespread messaging app, WhatsApp, has been banned from the U.S. Home of Representatives, the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) Catherine Szpindor advised employees there on Monday.
“The Workplace of Cybersecurity has deemed WhatsApp a high-risk to customers as a result of lack of transparency in the way it protects consumer knowledge, absence of saved knowledge encryption, and potential safety dangers concerned with its use,” the electronic mail stated, seen by Axios.
Associated: Microsoft Workers Are Banned From Utilizing This Standard AI App
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