WhatsApp Unblocked In Brazil Following Overturn Of Original Decision

According to a report from yesterday, WhatsApp was ordered to be blocked in Brazil for 72 hours following a judge’s ruling. Basically WhatsApp was ordered to turn over data related to a drug case, but the company claims that this is information that they did not have, which ultimately led to the service being blocked.

However it looks like WhatsApp has prevailed because that decision has since been overturned, thus allowing WhatsApp users in the country to go back to using the app. It has been estimated that over 100 million users were affected, presumably some of which are law enforcement which could have affected the decision to overturn the original ruling.

WhatsApp’s co-founder Jan Koum posted on Facebook saying, “Yet again, millions of innocent Brazilians are being punished because a court wants WhatsApp to turn over information we repeatedly said we don’t have. Not only do we encrypt messages end-to-end on WhatsApp to keep people’s information safe and secure, we also don’t keep your chat history on our servers. When you send an end-to-end encrypted message, no one else can read it – not even us.”

This isn’t the first time WhatsApp has managed to get out of a court’s decision. Last year the service was banned as well for 48 hours, but the company managed to get the decision overturned in about 12 hours.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: Apps, Legal, Privacy, Whatsapp