WhatsApp Reaches Two Billion Users

WhatsApp reiterated its commitment to secure communications, as it revealed its monthly active user numbers surpassed the 2 billion mark. The company highlights “many significant and special moments that take place over WhatsApp“ adding in a statement that it was “humbled and honoured to reach this milestone“.

But the Facebook-owned company emphasised protecting conversations on the platform, a key selling point from the off, was “more important than ever“. It reiterated its approach to use default end-to-end encryption in messages, a move which was met with mixed feelings by some government officials and thought to be among the reasons why co-founder Jan Koum stepped down as CEO in 2018.

WhatsApp described strong encryption as a “necessity in modern life“, emphasising messages on its platform are only kept on the user’s phone. “Privacy and security is in our DNA, which is why we have end-to-end encryption,“ it added, explaining this means “messages, photos, videos, voice messages, documents, status updates and calls are secured from falling into the wrong hands“.