As WhatsApp is owned by Facebook, it will hand over data to the police under the same policies as above. However, as WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted, the police will not be able to read your conversations with other people.
The information they can access includes:
- Your name
- Your mobile number
- IP addresses
- Locations
- Your contacts
- Data from web pages accessed via the app
- The time and duration of your conversations
- Contact details for the people you speak with
The only way the police can access the content of your conversations is if they directly open the app using your phone.
Conversely, Facebook Messenger is not end-to-end encrypted by default. This means the police can access conversation content unless you turn on the “secret conversations” feature which will enable encryption.
