The expert pointed out the risks of providing e-mail data to foreign messengers.

Linking an email to a foreign social media account carries several potential risks in terms of data collection and privacy. Igor Bederov, the founder of the Russian company Internet Search, told Izvestia about this on November 14.

"Until recently, WhatsApp (owned by Meta Corporation, which is recognized as extremist and banned in the Russian Federation) identified the user solely by phone number. Facebook Instagram allows Meta (recognized as extremist and banned in Russia) to improve the internal user profile by linking your messenger activity with your Facebook or Instagram account (social networks belong to Meta, recognized as extremist and banned in Russia), if they use the same e-mail," he explained.

Bederov added that this gives the company a much more complete picture of the user. E-mail can also serve as a key to merge data about your behavior from different sources, which allows you to display more relevant, but at the same time more personalized and intrusive ads. Although the function settings indicate that the email address is not visible to other users, it is stored on Meta servers and can be accessed by the company's employees, its numerous partners, and upon official requests.

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Meta Corporation is an American company and, accordingly, falls under the jurisdiction of the United States. This defines its responsibilities in the field of data storage and transmission. Meta is required to comply with American laws, including the infamous CLOUD Act.

"This law allows the US authorities to demand user data from American IT companies, regardless of whether this data is stored in the United States or in other countries. This means that the data of Russian users, including the linked e-mail, phone number and metadata of correspondence, can be transferred to the American special services upon an official request as part of investigations," the expert noted.

It is important to note that the content of personal WhatsApp chats is protected by end-to-end encryption and theoretically should not be accessible even by Meta itself, however, metadata (who communicated, when, and with whom) is not protected in the same way.

The account blocking policy is determined by internal Meta regulations, which are not transparent. Theoretically, the presence of an e-mail gives the company an additional parameter that can be analyzed. For example, if an e-mail is registered in a sanctioned country or is associated with suspicious activity.

"Over the past 8 years, we have also recorded the transfer of such information from Meta to intelligence complexes such as ECHO, Locomotive and Lavander, used in the countries of the "Five Eyes" and Israel. For a user in Russia, the function of linking to e-mail was presented as a way to reduce the risk of account blocking due to possible failures in SMS delivery, which reflects Meta's focus on continuing to collect personal data of Russians," Bederov said.

To minimize the risks, he advised to create a separate email account for registration in WhatsApp and other Meta services, which does not contain a first and last name and is not used for critical services. Two-factor authentication must be installed on the main mailbox and on the secondary one.

In June, Ruslan Tagiev, CEO of Mediascope, said that almost 60% of the time Russians spend on social media is spent on domestic services. According to him, Russians spend most of their time on VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, Zen, Rutube, and Telegram.

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