However, on WhatsApp you can limit your location data or information about when you’re online from people who have your number, turn off read receipts, and stop people from adding you to group chats without your consent.
If you don’t like the data collection by Facebook, your best option may be to switch to Signal, a messaging app with end-to-end encryption that has much better privacy practices. Anyone with access to your cloud account will be able to read every message you’ve sent through the app. And if you choose to back up your WhatsApp data to iCloud or Google Drive, the messages won’t be encrypted there. It’s also possible for police who have a warrant to gain access to people you’ve called or texted, or who have called and texted you. The company does not allow WhatsApp users to opt out of any of this data sharing.
Facebook might not be able to read your messages, but it can access the details of whom you contact, when, how often, and from where. More importantly, for many people, WhatsApp is owned by Facebook.
