I’ve been asked many times by people to join Whatsapp groups etc and I always refuse. It looks like a horrendous app from a privacy standpoint and as far as I can tell isn’t even remotely GDPR compliant. I’d not trust it in the slightest.
As others have said iPhones/iOS are in most situations remarkably secure, though no OS can survive a user with admin rights explicitly giving an app access to personal data, which as far as I can tell is a requirement for installing Whatsapp. iOS should have sandboxed it, but it will have harvested your contacts and photos if you gave it permission to do so! By installing it you probably did just that.
isn’t even remotely GDPR compliant
Out of curiosity, when you see the compulsory cookies notice on every website now, do you check to see what cookies it is placing on your machine, if any ?
and I seriously doubt more than .001% are aware of how it functions.
When I first load whatsapp it asks for access to contacts which I deny. If it then goes ahead and does it anyway well thats bad. Beyond that I couldnt give a flying, if it wants to harvest data on when my sons next football match is.
Genuinely I don't care, same with google. I get a free service, they get to see that I was in London on that day in 2018, who gives a shit.
I communicated via message and verbally over WhatsApp regarding a mate having a hair transplant - and only WhatsApp as I can recall it vividly. After which I begin to see hair transplant ads on YouTube, IG etc.... Coincidence? I think not.