Iranian state television on Tuesday afternoon urged people to remove WhatsApp from their smartphones, alleging without specific evidence that the messaging app gathered user information to send to Israel.
In a statement, WhatsApp said it was “concerned these false reports will be an excuse for our services to be blocked at a time when people need them the most.” WhatsApp uses end-to-end encryption, meaning a service provider in the middle can’t read a message.
“We do not track your precise location, we don’t keep logs of who everyone is messaging and we do not track the personal messages people are sending one another," it added. “We do not provide bulk information to any government.”
End-to-end encryption means that messages are scrambled so that only the sender and recipient can see them. If anyone else intercepts the message, all they will see is a garble that can’t be unscrambled without the key.
Gregory Falco, an assistant professor of engineering at Cornell University and cybersecurity expert, said it’s been demonstrated that it's possible to understand metadata about WhatsApp that does not get encrypted.
“So you can understand things about how people are using the app and that’s been a consistent issue where people have not been interested in engaging with WhatsApp for that (reason),” he said.
Another issue is data sovereignty, Falco added, where data centers hosting WhatsApp data from a certain country are not necessarily located in that country. It's more than feasible, for instance, that WhatsApp's data from Iran is not hosted in Iran.
“Countries need to house their data in-country and process the data in-country with their own algorithms. Because it’s really hard increasingly to trust the global network of data infrastructure,” he said.
WhatsApp is owned by Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram.
Iran has blocked access to various social media platforms over the years but many people in the country use proxies and virtual private networks, or VPNs, to access them. It banned WhatsApp and Google Play in 2022 during mass protests against the government over the death of a woman held by the country’s morality police. That ban was lifted late last year.
WhatsApp had been one of Iran's most popular messaging apps besides Instagram and Telegram.
FILE - A WhatsApp icon is displayed on an iPhone, Nov. 15, 2018, in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner, File)
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Multiple people were shot Saturday in the area of Brown University, police said, as the Ivy League school issued an active shooter alert and urged students and staff to take shelter during the second day of final exams.
Police did not immediately release details about the number of victims, their conditions or the circumstances of the shooting.
University officials initially told students and staff that a suspect was in custody, before later saying that was not the case and that police were still searching for a suspect or suspects, according to alerts issued through Brown’s emergency notification system.
The reported shooting occurred near the Barus & Holley building, a seven-story complex that houses the university’s School of Engineering and physics department. According to the university’s website, the building includes more than 100 laboratories, dozens of classrooms and offices.
President Donald Trump said late in the afternoon that he has been briefed on the shooting.
“God bless the victims and the families of the victims!” he said on his social media site.
Students were urged to shelter in place as police responded to the scene, and people were told to avoid the area. Officials cautioned that information remained preliminary as investigators worked to determine what had occurred.
Police were actively investigating and still gathering information from the scene, said Kristy DosReis, the chief public information officer for the city of Providence.
Brown is a private institution with roughly 7,300 undergraduate students and more than 3,000 graduate students. Saturday was the second day of final exams for the fall semester.
Emergency personnel gather at Hope and Waterman Streets at Brown University in Providence, R.I., Saturday, Dec. 13, 2025, during reports of a shooting. (AP Photo/Mark Stockwell)
Ambulances line Hope Street at Brown University in Providence, R.I., Saturday, Dec. 13, 2025, during reports of a shooting. (AP Photo/Mark Stockwell)
Emergency personnel gather at Hope and Waterman Streets at Brown University in Providence, R.I., Saturday, Dec. 13, 2025, during reports of a shooting. (AP Photo/Mark Stockwell)
In this image from video, law enforcement officials gather outside the Brown University campus in Providence, R.I., on Saturday, Dec. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Kimberlee Kruesi)
FILE - The logo for Brown University is displayed at the school's campus in Providence, R.I., on Wednesday, April 25, 2018. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)
