There are countless solutions in the app stores that promise modifications and additional benefits for the famous messaging service WhatsApp. What they offer is mainly that their users can view deleted messages or hide the display of statuses. For this reason, such unofficial applications are becoming more and more popular, but what are the risks of using them?
Lately, an app known as WAMR, which promises to recover deleted messages, has become very popular on the Internet and has accumulated 52,000 downloads in the Google Play Store.
WAMR to recover deleted WhatsApp messages – the utility you were looking for?
The application describes itself as “the utility you were looking for”. And as its description reads, “it is a tool to recover text messages and also any attached file, whether they are images, videos, audios or gifs” .
But, cybersecurity experts have warned about the imminent risks of allowing third-party apps access to WhatsApp chats and contacts. This is why, Andrés Guzmán, director of the Adalid cybersecurity laboratory, comments:
“Nothing is free, you are paying with information in exchange for extra benefits and that payment can cost you security.”
This option recovers deleted messages by reading notifications. But, in addition, it can also “monitor other apps such as Messenger, Telegram or other instant messaging platforms”.
And yes, the truth is that WAMR delivers what it promises, but, to deliver it enters the notifications data, in short, it has access to your conversations.
For his part, Alejandro Marthi, a researcher at the computer security firm Forcepoint, states that:
“Installing applications that promise to do something that the original app doesn’t offer can carry a very large risk.”
The researcher points out that this type of app can steal user data without the user being aware of it. And the fact that WAMR can access WhatsApp servers and information should be reason enough to notice that something is wrong.
Miguel Angel Mendoza, IT security specialist at Eset, concludes the following:
“If we have an app on our mobile that has permanent access to our chat, read messages and even make copies of them and then retrieve the content, do we really understand its implications?”
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