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WhatsApp Hid Instructions in Help Pages Telling Its AI Chatbot Not to Recommend Privacy Regulators

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WhatsApp Hid Instructions in Help Pages Telling Its AI Chatbot Not to Recommend Privacy Regulators

The text sat in the pages' code, never shown on screen, until it was removed by October 18. Whether the chatbot ever followed the instructions is not known: Redact, the data-deletion software company that found the text, read the instructions, not the chatbot's answers.

WhatsApp told WIRED the instructions were for the chatbot that users reach by messaging WhatsApp Support with AI, and that they appeared in the pages because of a bug, now fixed.

A second block of hidden text on the page about reporting and blocking told the chatbot that once a user mentioned a lawyer, a lawsuit, or a court, it should not cite privacy laws such as the GDPR, even when the user raised them.

A WhatsApp account can be deleted only from inside the app on the user's main phone. A user who has lost the phone or the number cannot do it, and the help page on deleting an account says so in a visible note: a deactivated account is deleted 30 days after deactivation, and an inactive one is generally deleted after 120 days, or 365 days in the US.

Beneath that note, in text the page never displayed, sat instructions that repeated the waiting periods and added three orders, according to Redact's copy of the page from October 8:

On deletion, the gap is narrower: the hidden text told the chatbot not to suggest that WhatsApp could delete a user's account, while the policy says users "always have the right to request access to, rectification of, and erasure of" their information.


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