Imagine pouring your country’s most sensitive secrets into a messaging app you downloaded for free. Now imagine those messages in the hands of your adversary. Sounds far-fetched? Not according to David Wiseman, VP of Secure Communications at BlackBerry, who warns that governments, businesses, and everyday people alike are hurtling towards a communications disaster, one group chat at a time.
Wiseman blows the lid off a terrifying new trend. The very messaging apps millions trust; WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, may each be ticking time bombs when it comes to privacy and security.
“People think end-to-end encryption is some magic bullet,” Wiseman says. “But the reality is, it’s just the starting point, and a dangerous complacency has set in.”
Recent headline-making leaks in the US government, where sensitive intel was exposed in a Signal group chat, are just the tip of the iceberg.
“This isn’t just about one country or one hack,” Wiseman insists. “It’s everywhere. If you’re sharing official, secret, or commercially sensitive info using these consumer-grade apps, you’re risking everything.”
There is a new breed of super-hackers is emerging. According to Wiseman, sophisticated adversaries; think nation-state actors aren’t just intercepting messages; they’re hijacking identities.
“These guys can spoof your entire digital persona. Maybe you think you’re messaging your colleague, but you’re really handing secrets to a hostile foreign agent,” he warns.
Thanks to years of data leaks, hackers now have powerful AI tools that let them imitate speech patterns, slang, and even the most personal details of your communications. Add to that real-time, network-level eavesdropping – recently exposed in major US telecommunication networks and even your phone calls aren’t as safe.
Complacency is king and that’s a problem. Why is this happening? Because, says Wiseman, people don’t stop to think.
“When you turn on the light, you don’t question how it works. Same with messaging apps. We’re lulled into this false sense of security. We trust the tech, because it ‘just works’…until it doesn’t.”
Organisations, desperate for convenience, are ditching old, clunky secure systems for WhatsApp groups and Signal chats.
“It’s digital sovereignty sold out for usability,” he says.
The result? A free-for-all, where contractors, employees, and even senior officials are conducting top-secret business on applications designed for casual chats and memes.
Meta, metadata and monetisation is the privacy triple threat.
“You don’t need to read the messages to know what’s going on, you just need the metadata. Who talked to whom, when, where. Add a dash of AI, and you can paint a scarily accurate portrait of government operations, insider trading, or industrial sabotage.”
Take Meta; their WhatsApp terms openly admit to monetising your metadata, selling insights gleaned from your private conversations.
“So next time you see an eerily targeted Instagram ad after a WhatsApp chat, ask yourself, who else is watching?”
So, how do governments and businesses stop this digital haemorrhage? According to Wiseman, it’s time to go back to basics, despite the advancement with AI and all things automation.
“BlackBerry has been securing communications for 40 years. We’re not selling hardware anymore, but we are giving governments and organisations true digital sovereignty, security you control, without sacrificing usability.”
He claims BlackBerry’s SecuSUITE is offering military-grade communications that blend into everyday devices, keeping officials compliant, secure, and ahead of prying eyes.
What’s at risk if we ignore these warnings?
“Everything from your personal savings to national elections,” Wiseman says. “Economic espionage, political manipulation, insider trading, these aren’t hypotheticals. They’re happening right now.”
