Government minister Penny Mordaunt is the latest witness in the government’s Covid inquiry to have an issue with missing WhatsApp messages.
House of Commons leader claims two years of WhatsApp chats with Boris Johnson have disappeared, with Johnson losing 5,000 messages during the pandemic. Former Stormont minister, Ms Mordaunt, found no messages.
A woman was charged tens of thousands of pounds for forensic examination of her phone, as it belonged to her. WhatsApp messages are stored separately on each person’s device, and can only be deleted 48 hours after sending.
Boris Johnson factory reset his phone, changed his number, and mentioned a WhatsApp server outage. He explained that messages are never stored on WhatsApp servers, and are encrypted for end-to-end protection.