Meta’s standard messaging app, WhatsApp, has been banned from the U.S. Home of Representatives, the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) Catherine Szpindor instructed workers there on Monday.
“The Workplace of Cybersecurity has deemed WhatsApp a high-risk to customers because of the lack of transparency in the way it protects consumer information, absence of saved information encryption, and potential safety dangers concerned with its use,” the email said, seen by Axios.
Associated: Microsoft Employees Are Banned From Using This Popular AI App
The observe stated the app is banned from all authorities gadgets, together with telephones and computer systems.
“Home workers are NOT allowed to obtain or maintain the WhatsApp utility on any Home machine, together with any cell, desktop, or net browser variations of its merchandise,” the e-mail added. “When you have a WhatsApp utility in your Home-managed machine, 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 doable phrases.”
“We all know members and their staffs frequently use WhatsApp and we stay up for making certain members of the Home can be a 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 greater stage of safety than a lot of the apps on the CAO’s accepted record that don’t supply 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 greater stage of safety than a lot of the apps on the CAO’s accepted record that don’t supply that safety.”
Szpindor told CNBC in a written assertion that “defending the Individuals’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 workers.”
It isn’t 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 standard messaging app, WhatsApp, has been banned from the U.S. Home of Representatives, the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) Catherine Szpindor instructed workers there on Monday.
“The Workplace of Cybersecurity has deemed WhatsApp a high-risk to customers because of the lack of transparency in the way it protects consumer information, absence of saved information encryption, and potential safety dangers concerned with its use,” the email said, seen by Axios.
Associated: Microsoft Employees Are Banned From Using This Popular AI App
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