WhatsApp does have pretty good E2E encryption though. Its weak point were the backups. They were encrypted but the key was with WhatsApp and the data with Goog

WhatsApp does have pretty good E2E encryption though. Its weak point were the backups. They were encrypted but the key was with WhatsApp and the data with Google or Apple. All a friendly secret government request away. Of course you can turn off backups but you don't know whether everyone in your group does. However they have recently started to shore this up too. You can now choose to keep the key yourself. Of course you still don't know whether everyone in your chat group does this.. But even the alternative password method is much safer than before. According to FB it's stored in a HSM. Yes, we have to take their word for it. But if you use the numeric key only you will have it (and thus no way to recover the data which is a normal consequence of good encryption) WhatsApp still leaks data for sure. Like all your contacts (even non WhatsApp users), and all your metadata, like when you're talking to whom. But the content is pretty safe there IMO. Surprisingly so for Facebook. I don't like using it very much either but I'm Europe we simply don't have a choice. I limit its access to my contacts and photos by running it inside a 'work profile' on Android. Messenger is a different story of course.