Before dissecting data collection, it's paramount to understand WhatsApp's foundational privacy feature: end-to-end encryption (E2EE). This technology is designed to protect the content of personal communications.
Signal Protocol: WhatsApp utilizes the robust Signal Protocol, widely recognized for its strong cryptographic guarantees, to encrypt all personal messages, voice and video calls, photos, videos, documents, and status updates.
Device-Specific Keys: Crucially, the encryption and decryption keys are generated and stored only on the users' devices. Neither WhatsApp nor Meta ever has access to these keys.
Content Inaccessibility: This means that once a message is encrypted on estonia phone number list the sender's device, it remains unreadable by anyone, including WhatsApp itself and its parent company Meta, as it travels across the internet and even when temporarily stored on WhatsApp's servers for delivery. Only the intended recipient's device can decrypt it.
No Backdoors: WhatsApp has consistently stated that it does not build backdoors into its encryption, nor does it retain copies of messages after they are delivered.
Optional Encrypted Backups: While cloud backups (Google Drive, iCloud) are typically secured by the cloud provider, WhatsApp introduced an optional feature for end-to-end encrypted backups, allowing users to secure their cloud backups with a password or a 64-digit encryption key that only they know.