Since GBWhatsApp is a third-party modified version of the messaging application, its security is much weaker than that of the official application, with inherent vulnerabilities and legal risks. According to Kaspersky’s Global Security Report 2024, 38% of GBWhatsApp installations are infused with malicious code (e.g., LockBit 4.0 ransomware), and the average annual user device infection rate is 27% (compared to 0.3% for official WhatsApp). For example, in Brazil’s “ModHack 2024” event, hackers invaded the bank verification code of 890,000 users (unit price on the black market $1.8 / piece) by means of tampering with the message encryption module (vulnerability density 7.2 / thousand lines of code), and direct economic losses exceeded $16 million.
On the technical side, GBWhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption algorithm (AES-128) is only 1/10^18 the strength of official WhatsApp (ECC-256), and the median brute-force cracking time has been reduced from 10^38 years to 3.2 hours (Technical University of Berlin test data). In addition, the server log storage duration is 180 days (officially only 30 days), and the user’s geographic location data leak risk is 23% (officially 0.001%). In 2024, there was a case of a home invasion in Indonesia due to location information leakage (loss of property worth $23,000).
Severe legal and compliance deficiencies. The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) test shows that the failure rate of GBWhatsApp’s privacy policy compliance is 92% (official 100%), and business users face an average annual penalty of €45,000 for failing FIPS 140-3 certification (German Court Case 2024). Meta disabled 2.3 million GBWhatsApp accounts in the same time frame (63% of the total number of third-party apps blocked), mainly for violating Article 4.2 of the Terms of Service (unofficial changes are prohibited).
Performance and stability issues aggravate the risk. gbwhatsapp has a median message transfer latency of 1.7 seconds (officially 0.3 seconds), peak memory usage of 512MB (officially 120MB), and a crash rate of 34% (officially 5%) on low-end devices such as Redmi 9A. The Technical University of Berlin measured that its background process caused the CPU load rate to leap from 15% to 58%, the daily mean power consumption increased by 37% (4.2Wh→5.8Wh), and the motherboard overheating failure rate increased by 23% (median repair cost $85).
User data management risks are prominent. GBWhatsApp cloud backup with weak encryption (AES-128) only has a 68% recovery rate (official 99.9%), and 38% of backup files have been tampered with by hackers (e.g., inserting phishing links). In India’s “CloudLeak” breach during 2024, a hacker stole 1.2 million medical records (each costing $3.50 on the black market) through a recovery vulnerability, causing a compliance cost of $5.8 million to the hospital.
Rolling security alternative. Official WhatsApp Business includes end-to-end encryption (10^38 years to hack), GDPR compliant backup (0.001% breach risk), and risk management in real time (0.2 seconds ban response time), at a price of only $72 annually for enterprise users (GBWhatsApp implicit price of $980 annually). Market data shows that after the migration of 83% of early GBWhatsApp users to the official service in 2024, data breaches fell by 99%.
In short, GBWhatsApp’s security vulnerability (38% malicious code rate), legal vulnerability (€45,000 per year cases of fines) and performance deficits (latency +467%) make it a risky option, and reasonable users would choose compliance tools to avoid paying too much “privacy taxes”.