Will the EU start scanning your private messages?

Social media users are spreading panic online as the European Commission meets to discuss a new proposed framework for combating child sexual abuse material.

Many outraged social media users took to platforms like X to condemn the European Commission’s 2022 draft outlining new regulations to combat child sexual abuse material (CSAM).

“Chat Control will get approved, and there's nothing we can do about it,” said one X user, while others rallied the troops to raise awareness about what the new legislation really means.

Chat control will get approved and there's nothing we can do about it.

undefined Just another guy💙 (@jus_anotha_guy1) September 12, 2025

What is “Chat Control”?

Chat Control is the European Commission’s outline for combating CSAM mentions the potential to scan through text messages and chats for such content.

The proposal mentions that “the detection process is generally speaking the most intrusive one for users since it requires automatically scanning through texts in interpersonal communications.”

This could mean that European governments could obtain access to information from digital service providers operating in Europe, like popular social media sites and messaging apps such as WhatsApp.

The Chat Control proposal would legalize the scanning of all private digital communications including encrypted messages and photos, Fight Chat Control, the website raising awareness of the legislation, said.

Which EU countries support and oppose “Chat Control”?

However, this bill has been ongoing since 2022 and has seemingly gained no traction, with many countries opposing the ban.

The website “Fight Chat Control,” the citizen-based initiative that aims to spread awareness of the European Union’s proposal, has a comprehensive list of the countries that support and oppose the proposal.

The eight EU countries that supposedly oppose the proposal include:

• Austria
• Belgium
• Czech Republic
• Finland
• Germany
• Luxembourg
• Netherlands
• Poland

The 15 EU countries that supposedly support the proposal include:

• Bulgaria
• Croatia
• Cyprus
• Denmark
• France
• Hungary
• Ireland
• Italy
• Latvia
• Lithuania
• Malta
• Portugal
• Slovakia
• Spain
• Sweden

While certain countries like Estonia, Greece, Romania, and Slovenia are undecided.

What does “Chat Control” mean for users’ privacy?

While nothing has been set in stone as of yet, the vote is scheduled for September 12th, 2025.

This has people worried that if this legislation does go forward, then it could have grave privacy implications.

In the 2022 proposal, the Commission said that “such scanning is often the only possible way to detect” CSAM and grooming behaviours.

However, this may not mean that all European citizen’s devices will be scanned en masse, as advocates of the proposal claim that this will be carried out in a “limited and legally defined way,” Euronews reports.

Yet this hasn’t been clearly outlined, leading to widespread fear and concern spreading across social media platforms.

What happens to app security if “Chat Control” is passed?

If “Chat Control” was passed, this may significantly weaken cybersecurity on end-to-end encrypted apps, allowing cybercriminals to circumvent security controls.

Cybersecurity experts are concerned that mass scanning of users' chats, specifically encrypted chats, could weaken security and open potential attack vectors.

If encryption is compromised, this could mean that its easier for hackers to exfiltrate sensitive data or for more data leaks to emerge as a result.

Furthermore, automated scanning of chats could lead to more false positives, as we’ve seen with facial recognition technology, as the tech itself doesn’t understand the nuances in human communication.

This could lead to false imprisonment which is what social media users in Europe seem to fear.

A report from Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) claims that when using scanning technology, almost 100,000 out of nearly 206,000 reports forwarded by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children were not criminally relevant and had an error rate of 48%, Reclaim the Net reports.

Reactions to the “Chat Control” proposal

The proposal has had varying reactions from European politicians and social media users alike.

French politician and European parliament member, Mathilde Androuët, submitted three questions to the European Parliament raising concerns surrounding “widespread mass surveillance” which threatens |the privacy and freedoms of EU citizens.”

Since the beginning of Denmark's EU presidency, which started on July 1st, 2025, the country has reintroduced the legislation which more EU parliamentary members have opposed.

the Danish can go fuck themselves with undefinedchat controlundefined pic.twitter.com/R17yM9Jre5

undefined Jean P.D. Meijer ― 🇪🇺 eu/acc (@initjean) September 5, 2025

Greek politician and European parliament member, Emmanouil Fragkos, also wrote to Parliament stating that the resurgence of this proposal has “raised new, grave concerns about the respect of fundamental rights in the EU.”

“The proposal envisages mass scanning of private communications, including encrypted conversations, raising serious issues of compliance with Article 7 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights by threatening to undermine the data security of citizens, businesses and institutions,” Fragkos writes.

The Greek politician reaffirms the aforementioned issues of weakened security which would open up apps like WhatsApp and other communications platforms to exploitation by cybercriminals.

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Furthermore, he also states that false positives would likely occur, meaning that innocent people could be wrongly incriminated.

Reddit users also raised questions surrounding the technology's ability to differentiate pedophiles from parents.

“How will they differentiate between pedophiles and parents that are so stupid that they send pictures of their naked kids to everyone?” said one Reddit user.

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