WhatsApp’s popularity has grown despite recent controversies on how the app was used to exploit smartphone vulnerabilities and snoop on certain users across the world, including the world’s richest man Jeff Bezos.
WhatsApp, the world’s most popular messaging platform, now has over 2 billion users globally. This means a quarter of the world now uses the messaging platform with end-to-end encryption. In 2019, WhatsApp announced that it had crossed 400 million users in India, its largest market.
“Private conversations that once were only possible face-to-face can now take place across great distances through instant chats and video calling. There are so many significant and special moments that take place over WhatsApp and we are humbled and honored to reach this milestone,” a Whatsapp blogpost said.
WhatsApp’s popularity has grown despite recent controversies on how the app was used to exploit smartphone vulnerabilities and snoop on certain users across the world, including the world’s richest man Jeff Bezos.
“We know that the more we connect, the more we have to protect. As we conduct more of our lives online, protecting our conversations is more important than ever,” the post said, reiterating how even Whatsapp could not read messages sent on the platform.
“Messages are only kept on your phone, and no one in between can read your messages or listen to your calls, not even us. Your private conversations stay between you.”
The platform also promised to work with top security experts, employ industry leading technology to “stop misuse as well as provide controls and ways to report issues — without sacrificing privacy”.
WhatsApp CEO Will Cathcart told The Wall Street Journal, “WhatsApp would also continue on a path largely independent of parent Facebook Inc’s core business.”
Cathcart declined to comment on how his company would react, if ordered to create a back door or lose access to a major market. He said that he did not want to “get into playing out every hypothetical,” but he noted that his company has a history of standing up for encryption.