WhatsApp’s chatbot was given hidden instructions to not mention privacy regulators

Source: Malwarebytes Labs

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At a glance

WhatsApp instructed its AI support chatbot not to recommend contacting privacy regulators when users couldn’t delete their accounts, researchers found. Privacy software company Redact discovered the hidden text on October 8. Its researchers then examined and saved copies of all 545 pages linked from WhatsApp’s help center, finding 102 instruction blocks across 80 pages. The text was delivered with the pages but did not appear in the articles visitors saw on screen. Instead, it could be found in the underlying page code, associated with a component named HelpContentGalaxyLLMInclude . Most of t…