WhatsApp hid instructions in its help pages telling its chatbot not to recommend a data protection regulator
Redact, a company that builds data-deletion software, found hidden text embedded in the source code of WhatsApp's help pages, invisible on screen but readable by anyone who viewed the page's code, instructing WhatsApp's support chatbot not to recommend that users who could no longer delete their accounts contact a data protection authority, even though WhatsApp's own European privacy policy explicitly states that right. A second hidden block told the chatbot that once a user mentioned a lawyer or a lawsuit, it should stop citing laws such as the GDPR, even if the user had already raised them. Redact reviewed all 545 pages linked from WhatsApp's help center and found 102 such hidden blocks across 80 of them, most of them harmless clarifications, but a few sharing the same pattern of steering users away from their rights. WhatsApp removed all the hidden text on October 18, after WIRED contacted parent company Meta, calling it a bug that has since been fixed. For a business building its own support chatbot, the case shows that the instructions behind an AI assistant, the text defining what it will and won't say, function as a compliance document rather than a mere technical detail, since anyone who views the page's source code can read them.
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