According to the test data of the cybersecurity company Kaspersky in 2023, gb whatsapp’s “incognito mode” has the ability to reduce users’ online status, input prompts and read replies exposure rate to 0.1% (100% for official WhatsApp). However, the coverage rate of its modified end-to-end encryption protocol is only 68% of the original one, therefore the probability of success in man-in-the-middle attacks (MITM) will rise from 0.03% to 1.2%. To illustrate, in one such commercial espionage case busted by the Sao Paulo police, Brazil in 2023, attackers broke into gb whatsapp’s 127,000 chat logs using a protocol vulnerability involving the total of 3.8 million US dollars.
Technically, gb whatsapp’s privacy mode relies on modifying APK code and introducing approximately 23,000 lines of additional code (an 8.5% overall share). It enjoys the blessing of the “chat lock” functionality (15 times as the limit for incorrect password attempts in the top position, and 5 times within the official one), but its SQLite database encryption key storage does not benefit from hardware security support (e.g., TEE). It can be harvested 19 times more likely than in the official build. Tests by the Dutch NGO TILT show that when triggering the “anti-screenshot” feature of gb whatsapp, the screen capture success rate dropped from 98% to 3.5%. However, this feature resulted in a 27% increase in app memory usage (with a peak of 480MB), and the probability of inducing lag on low-end devices (such as Redmi 9A) increased to 43%.
In terms of legal compliance, gb whatsapp was fined 620,000 euros by the Italian Data Protection Agency in the first quarter of 2024 for violating the “default privacy design” principle in Article 25 of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The involved cases include unencrypted backup files (accounting for 89%) and metadata retention overdue (with an average storage period of 90 days and GDPR requirement of ≤30 days). Moreover, according to Section 43A of India’s Information Technology Act, if a company discloses customer information processed on gb whatsapp, it can be fined up to 5 million rupees (about 60,000 US dollars). After being fined for the same in March 2024 by a bank in Mumbai, its year-on-year customer churn rate increased by 17%.
User behavior data shows that approximately 35% of gb whatsapp users worldwide have enabled the “Hide Online status” option (72% of users aged 18-34), but 23% have suffered group message delay of more than 30 minutes due to misoperation. Research firm Counterpoint found that out of users who enabled the “message Scheduled Destruction” feature, only 14% correctly set up the AES-256 overwrite erase algorithm, while the remaining data residue recovery possibility increased to 7.3% due to poor encryption (such as AES-128). In Nigeria’s 2023 financial fraud case, criminals used gb whatsapp’s “self-destruct” feature to erase evidence. However, because the flash memory physical layer of the device was not encrypted, the police were able to recover 89% of the transaction logs through forensic techniques.
Performance-wise and risk balance, the privacy enhancement feature in gb whatsapp has increased the maximum CPU usage to 38% (22% for the original version). When running the “Full Privacy Mode” on Mediatek Dimensity 9200 smartphones, the app launching speed is increased from 1.8 seconds to 3.1 seconds, and it consumes an additional 4.2% of power hourly. Cybersecurity firm ESET suggests employing hardware isolation solutions (e.g., Samsung Knox containers) to reduce privacy data leakage from 21% to 2.4% but at a price tag of $18,000 in extra development and a size increase of 24MB in APK. Profound inspection identifies gb whatsapp as granting transient privacy advantages in some cases but having to bear the long-term disadvantages of technical susceptibilities, legal liability, and performance deterioration.