A post is being widely shared across social media platforms, claiming that Instagram has granted the government access to all group chats, allowing them to see users’ messages. Through this article let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Instagram has granted the government access to all group chats, allowing them to see users’ messages.
Fact: According to the existing Instagram privacy policy, there are no clauses pertaining to granting the government, access to all group chats. However, the policy states that Meta (Instagram’s parent company) shares users’ data with the government in response to legal requests or court orders in accordance with applicable law. Meta also mentioned that users can even enable end to end encryption for individual and group chats. Hence, the claim made in the post is Misleading.
There are no reports regarding Instagram granting the government, access to all group chats or messages of users. According to the existing Instagram privacy policy, there are no clauses about providing the government with access to group chats. The privacy policy also states that Instagram will inform users before it makes changes to its privacy policy.
However, the policy states that Meta (Instagram’s parent company) shares user’s data with the government in response to legal requests or court orders in accordance with applicable law. Meta also mentions that it scrutinises every government request and produces only the information that is narrowly tailored to respond to each request. Depending on the request, it gives basic subscriber information: Such as name, length of service, payment information, email addresses, and recent login/logout IP addresses, records pertaining to account activity: Such as message headers and IP addresses, stored contents of an account: Such as messages, photos, videos, timeline posts, and location information.
The privacy policy also states that each and every request Meta received is carefully reviewed for legal sufficiency and Meta may reject or require greater specificity on requests that appear overly broad or vague. Details about the government requests for data can be seen here.
Additionally, Instagram allows users to enable end-to-end encryption for individual and group chats. End-to-end encryption adds extra security and protection to sender messages and calls in a chat so that only the sender and the receiver can see, hear, or read them. Nobody including Meta, can see or listen to what’s sent or said.. More information regarding Meta’s privacy policy can be read here, here, and here.
To sum it up, Instagram did not grant the government access to all group chats.
