Is WhatsApp End-to-End Encrypted, and Does That Matter for Privacy? WhatsApp’s changes to its privacy policy in 2021 made headlines and caused a mass migration of users away from the app. Its new explanation of terms appeared to show that it would share information with Facebook, who bought the app in February of 2014. The Limits of End-to-End Encryption You might be wondering why that matters if the data you send via the app is still end-to-end encrypted. Doesn’t that mean that your data is secure? Well, yes and no. WhatsApp does still utilize end-to-end encryption, but it collects more metadata on you than apps like Signal. WhatsApp’s encryption doesn’t protect you from that kind of data collection—and all that metadata now gets shared with WhatsApp’s parent company Facebook.