Two to three days after her first WhatsApp message to me, I got her Facebook profile as a suggestion. She texted me a couple of times to ask me something about the company where I was working at the time, as she was interested in an open position at the company.

But then, a few months after this, I met an acquaintance and we exchanged numbers for some reason. I didn’t worry much about this at the time. The (not so and subtly) obviously answer was, WhatsApp had collected a lot of user data, and that’s precious to the Gollum that is Facebook. A lot of people wondered why would a company such as Facebook pay so much money to acquire a company such as WhatsApp, which had absolutely no way of making money, yet. My concern about WhatsApp was first raised when Facebook acquired the messaging platform, for loads and loads of money, the kind of money that was never heard of before in the tech space. So not all that I write here is bullshit. I’ve made a lot of other such switches in my digital life. But I have done enough research for the last couple of years, which made me switch to Firefox and DuckDuckGo (with a lot of customized preferences on both), from Google’s Chrome browser and search.

Let’s take a look at that.īefore we start, let me admit, I am by no means an expert on security and privacy online. But not all these users know what’s happening with the messages they exchange on these platforms. And some other people who are least bothered about their privacy online, think of Facebook Messenger. When we think of communicating with someone today, we mostly think of sending them a text message or a voice note on WhatsApp. Originally published on my blog, and will soon by removed from Medium.

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