Messaging apps are ubiquitous – more than 3.6 billion people worldwide use them, with the average person sending up to 72 messages every 24 hours. Every day WhatsApp alone channels over 100 billion messages, while WeChat transmits 205 million video messages. With this popularity has come a darker side: that of hacked personal data, cyber theft, and government violations of privacy. The way messaging apps are designed, work, and are managed exposes them by default to many risks: Most messaging apps require the user to input sensitive personal data, including name, phone number, and date of birth. WhatsApp, due to its database of user phone numbers, has been used to spread misinformation and fake news. Your messaging data is stored on the cloud, where it is not encrypted – leaving it vulnerable to being hacked. Many apps use your personal data for their own purposes. Facebook is known to share the data of Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp users with advertisers.. Global surveillance operations of citizens with WhatsApp accounts have been undertaken by governments via the use of spyware. A recent series of high-profile events have highlighted the size and frequency of the problem: In September 2021, the EU’s privacy watchdog fined WhatsApp €255 million for data processing and data sharing violations. Telegram, considered the safer option to WhatsApp, suffered a massive data leak in August 2020 that exposed the personal ...
