Is WhatsApp private? No

WhatsApp may be the most used applications you use on your mobile phone on a daily basis (let alone every few minutes and so on all day). You use it to check on your friends and family and even follow up on work with your colleagues.

It is a routine that I do, you do and everyone else does too (let’s not deny). It is also free (something that I personally do not always believe in because there is no such thing as a free lunch) and it is proclaimed to be secure as far as privacy is concerned. They always promote the statement “End-to-end encryption”, meaning your instant messages are ciphered so you can feel safe, as no one can read your messages except the person you are chatting to. Is WhatsApp private? No and my article today will share what really happens behind the scenes to prove the point.

First things first, are you aware that the founders of WhatsApp, Jan Koum and Brian Acton, sold and left the company as well? The founders, at first, promised WhatsApp users a simple, ad-free, private communication platform.

But when they sold it to Facebook (now known as Meta) for $19 billion (which was one of the largest tech deals in history), Facebook began integrating WhatsApp more deeply into its ecosystem, pushing for data sharing, monetisation and advertising, which made the original vision of the founder fade.

Consequently, both of the founders eventually left because of the disagreements about user privacy and the company’s growing commercial ambitions.

There you go, the proof is in the pudding. The simplicity, independence and privacy were overshadowed by the pursuit of profit and data integration.

So is the end-to-end encryption tagline around WhatsApp real? Yes, only for the messages, but not everything around it, which is also important. For example, who you talk to, what time of day, how frequent, where you go, what kind of apps you are using, your contact list and address book, activity patterns, etc.

All these are not encrypted and all these data can pretty much paint a surprisingly detailed picture of your habits and relationships even without reading a single message. All this information is known as metadata and it is not encrypted, nor is it private. They are available for sale. You may refer to my past articles on your data being sold, taken from you for free and sold for a fee.

Have you ever questioned yourself? Why doesn’t WhatsApp charge you? Why is it downloadable for free? Why have the founders eventually left? Who owns WhatsApp? Are they a non-profit organisation and are they offering the solution as charity?

WhatsApp doesn’t charge you because your data is the real currency. From your contact list to your activity patterns, every small signal contributes to massive datasets that feed advertising algorithms, shaping your insights and influencing what you see and believe online via other connected Meta products (Instagram and Facebook, to name a few).

While you may be enjoying a “free” chat, someone somewhere is building a digital profile about you and that profile is analysed, monetised and sold.

To conclude my article this week, I would like to note that YES, WhatsApp has encryption and YES, encryption is good, but big no, it’s not a magic shield. WhatsApp still collects data about how you use it and that’s often more valuable than the messages themselves. How to protect yourself is my next week’s article’s focus. Until then, stay safe and be wise.