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You get the goss with a verdict, a score out of 10, and the sources to check us.

Do we like WhatsApp?

Free end-to-end encrypted messaging and calling app with business tools, owned by Meta and based in Menlo Park, California.

Our score: 5 out of 10. Mixed. Encryption protects billions of people and it has fought spyware makers. It also has a long record of privacy and data-sharing fines, and the Meta data machine behind it is a worry.

WhatsApp is the messaging app used by billions. It now sits inside Meta, Mark Zuckerberg's company. Its longtime boss Will Cathcart stepped down in June 2026 after about seven years. Kunal Shah, founder of the Indian fintech CRED, took over, and Meta also invested in CRED as part of the handover.

The regulators haven't been kind. Ireland's Data Protection Commission fined WhatsApp €225m in 2021 over transparency failings, then €5.5m more in 2023. WhatsApp said it would appeal the 2023 fine and called its service legally compliant. Nigeria's tribunal also upheld a $220m penalty against Meta and WhatsApp over data practices.

The big 2026 row is whether Meta can read 'private' chats. Texas's attorney general sued, citing whistleblowers. A US class action made similar claims, and a judge dismissed it in July but let the plaintiffs refile. Meta says WhatsApp cannot access encrypted messages. These are allegations, not findings.

On the plus side, WhatsApp took the spyware firm NSO Group to court over a 2019 hacking campaign and won. A US judge barred NSO from targeting WhatsApp users, though she cut the punitive damages from $167m to $4m. We'd call it a decent app run by a company that has a lot of privacy questions to answer, so a middling score.

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Our take, from what the sources we read say on the day we checked. It can miss things; tap a source to read it.