There Are No Girls on the Internet - WhatsApp Says Your Messages Are Private. They're Not.

Episode Date: February 3, 2026

Is WhatsApp reading your private encrypted messages? That's what was claimed in a bombshell 2025 lawsuit, which cited whistleblowers from Australia, Brazil, India, Mexico and South Africa.  Meanwhile, the Trump administration is using every tool they have to force tech companies to turn over people's personal communications. Just this morning, the Washington Post published an exclusive investigative report about DHS using subpoenas to quietly surveil and silence their political enemies.  Protecting our digital privacy has never been more important. In this conversation with Anney and Samantha from Stuff Mom Never Told You, Bridget covers the many reasons you shouldn't trust WhatsApp and Zuckerberg with your personal messages, and suggests a safer alternative.  Link to today's Washington Post piece: https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2026/02/03/homeland-security-administrative-subpoena/     Let us know what you think by emailing [e-mail] or leaving a comment on Spotify.    Follow Bridget and TANGOTI on social media!  ||  instagram.com/bridgetmarieindc/ || tiktok.com/@bridgetmarieindc ||  youtube.com/@ThereAreNoGirlsOnTheInternet || bsky.app/profile/tangoti.bsky.social   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. There are No Girls on the Internet as a production of IHeart Radio. and UnBossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. Is WhatsApp reading your private encrypted messages? This is what U.S. authorities are looking into this week. Now, this comes after a lawsuit filed last week, which claims that Meta, the company that owns WhatsApp,

can access virtually all of WhatsApp users purportedly private communications. Now, according to The Guardian, the firm that filed the lawsuit against Meta attributes this allegation to unnamed, courageous whistleblowers from Australia, Brazil, India, Mexico, and South Africa. But meta, surprise, is denying the allegations, calling the lawsuits claim categorically false and absurd, and suggesting that the claim was a tactic to support the NSO group, an Israeli cyber intelligence firm primarily known for its proprietary spyware called Pegasus, which can turn pretty much any smartphone into a surveillance statement. device remotely. It's been used against activists and journalists and recently lost a lawsuit

brought by WhatsApp. So what does all of this mean for you? Well, Meta is all about the idea that WhatsApp is a secure, encrypted private platform to the point where my friend Annie, one of the host of the podcast stuff Mom ever told you, saw commercials suggesting that WhatsApp is a safe place to have conversations about topics as sensitive as your reproductive care, which, to be clear, it's not something I would recommend anybody do. And right now, the Trump administration is using every tool they have to force tech companies to turn over people's personal communications. In fact, just this morning, the Washington Post published an exclusive investigative report

about how DHS is using subpoenas to quietly surveil and silence their political enemies. So that means that protecting your digital privacy is more important than ever, not just for you, but anyone in your network who might be more vulnerable than you are. Your friend who overstayed their visa, your cousin who got an out-of-state abortion, their safety depends on you. I broke down all of this earlier this winter with my friends, Samantha and Annie, over at the podcast Stuff Mom Never Told You. I feel a little bit guilty about this one, Bridget, because it was a big topic that I was like, you know what I would really love to discuss? This, and it's just a huge spiraling thing, complicated. but I really appreciate you bringing it,

and I think it's really important, and I'm excited to talk about it and to learn more. So what are we discussing today? Today we are diving into the wide world of privacy, specifically whether or not messaging apps like WhatsApp actually are private. And I know I can already hear somebody in their car or washing their dishes right now thinking,

snooze, privacy has nothing to do with me. I don't break the law. I have nothing to hide. Whatever they have on me, they already have it. Who cares? That is actually a very common attitude called privacy nihilism

where you just are like, the government has all that they're going to have on me. It doesn't matter. And honestly, I get it. Most of us probably don't really think twice before you hit send on a message, right? But what if hitting send could put you at risk?

And the truth is in 2025, it literally can, whether you're texting about abortion or a protest. or whatever, your messages could be watched, flag, or even used against you. Privacy isn't just for people with something to hide. It is for people with something to lose. And right now, in 2025, given everything that is going on, that is all of us.

Yes, and we're going to get into this more, but it seems that companies at least have tapped into this, this worry, this concern, and they're competing with each other. and ad campaigns. Well, Annie, you sent me this ad from WhatsApp that in my opinion heavily implied that WhatsApp is meant to be like a private secure messaging platform and that one could even trust it

for a private conversation about healthcare. Like maybe if one was trying to pursue an abortion, this would be a platform that you could do that securely. You were also telling me about another ad from Apple where it was like camera birds being launched at people or something. Yes. Yes. That ad is very frightening, everyone.

It reminds me of the Black Mirror episode with, like, the robot dogs. Oh, yeah. Oh, the, like, Army robot dog that's like, um, like, it's like the post-apocalyptic Army robot killer dog. Oh, my God. Yes, but there's just these, like, cameras that have bird wings and they have this screeching sound they make, and they fly after people on the street who are looking at their phone, implying that they're watching you if you're on your phone or on your laptop. And they'll, like, crash into windows.

And it's a really piercing sound. It's really disturbing. And then it's an ad for Safari that's saying, like, other browsers watch you. Safari doesn't. Definitely, they got their finger on the pulse. And the pulse of the moment is concerned about our vast surveillance state. That much is clear. I think people are worried about it.

And I think these companies are like, let's tap into people's understandable concern about the surveillance state right now. It's so odd though because like when I sent you that the WhatsApp campaign, it's strange to me in a way that we're living in such a dystopian world where there are ads that are like, you don't want anyone to know about your medical. You don't want, it just has this vibe of overall. It's probably not safe. for people to know about these things.

I don't know, which is true. It's absolutely true, but it's strange that it's in an ad campaign. It's weird to get reminded of it while you're watching Bob's Burgers. Like, I totally understand the, like, it does feel rather dystopian. I totally get it. Yes. And I should say right off the top that I'm not like an online privacy expert. I don't work in IT.

I would more call myself a privacy enthusiast. enthusiast. One of the projects that I work on in addition to my own podcast or Our Owner Girls on the Internet is a podcast that I make with the Mozilla Foundation, the makers of the browser Firefox, called IRL. And it's a podcast all about technology, AI, ethics, and of course, privacy. We actually just launched our brand new season a few weeks ago, so folks should check it out. But what's interesting about the show, I think, is that we're really trying to make these conversations that might feel wonky or inaccessible, accessible for everybody. And I think that it's important for folks like me who aren't necessarily

privacy experts or don't work in IT to have a sense of the privacy of the technology and the platforms that we do use every day. Like we shouldn't treat those as conversations that are just for experts. And especially in 2025, when as we were just discussing, the vibes, it's giving 1984 at times. It's giving dystopian. It's giving, you know, something out of a scary novel, only it's real. I mean, I don't know if that's how you all are feeling, but that's how I'm feeling. And so, yeah, privacy and the privacy around the apps that we use every single day becomes even more important. Yes. And I know we're going to talk about it, but we've seen instances of these apps turning over data that people thought was private, weren't thinking that it was

going to be shared in this way. So, and you know, I have to say WhatsApp is a app that I only have experienced generally with my international friends. But I did always get this vibe that it was more secure than other apps. So when I saw this ad campaign, what set me off was not WhatsApp. It's when I saw meta at the bottom of it. And I was like, okay, wait. Now I have a lot of concerns.

Now I have a lot of concerns. So yeah, what's going on with WhatsApp here? So let's get into it. For folks who maybe don't know about WhatsApp, it is a free global messaging platform that was launched in 2009. And it allows folks to send texts, voice messages, video messages, make voice and video calls, share images, documents, user locations, and other content. It has over 2 billion, billion with a B users.

They're like 8 billion people on planet Earth. So like, that is a lot of users. And in 2016, it became the number one messaging platform in the world. And Annie, you were just talking about how you associate it with like international folks. And that is absolutely true because it is particularly important for global communication. If you have aunties or cousins in another country, odds are you've probably used WhatsApp to stay in touch. And by 2016, it was the primary means of internet communication in regions, including including the Americas, the Indian subcontinent, and large parts of Europe and Africa.

So, yeah, it is a very, very popular messaging platform. In 2014, it was bought by META, the company that runs Facebook, but back then it was still just called Facebook. Listeners have rightly called me out for sometimes mixing up those two names. Facebook was Facebook in 2014. They changed their name to META to sort of avoid some scandals. But Facebook and meta, for the most part, or like, you could think of them as interchangeable for the most part.

And so they bought WhatsApp in 2014, and that means that like the same way that for me getting online when I was a kid meant America Online, like America Online functionally was the internet for me. Facebook is essentially the internet for a whole, a whole big swatch of people all over the world, right? And this is all controlled by one person and one company, Mark Zuckerberg. And so really think about that. This one private company basically has talked to total control of the main method of how people get information and communicate with each other. So that gives him specifically like an incredible amount of power, power that I would argue has not always been used ethically or responsibly and not always done in a way that keeps

what's best for people at the forefront. So if you're asking the big question of like, whether or not you would trust WhatsApp run by meta at their word that they are private, I mean, it really comes down to the fact, like, do you trust Facebook? Do you trust Mark Zuckerberg? Because that's really what it comes down to how Facebook and Zuckerberg define what privacy is, like, what is private and what is not private and, like, what that means. And so this is where it gets a little bit confusing. WhatsApp messages are end-to-end encrypted by default.

So you don't have to turn anything on to message in that way, both for messages and for calls. And bottom line is, like, that is very good for privacy. So I want to be clear that I'm not saying that WhatsApp specifically is bad for privacy. However, the way that meta operates as a company is what, in my opinion, makes things a little bit murky. Mozilla's privacy not included blog put it like this. WhatsApp is owned by Facebook, which means Facebook can access some data WhatsApp collects on you for specified purposes, which may be bad for privacy. So this means WhatsApp might be bad for privacy. So this means WhatsApp might be owned. be collecting data on you when you use it.

And we actually sort of know this is the case. As of September 2021, it is known that WhatsApp makes extensive use of outside contractors and AI systems to examine certain messages, images, and videos that have been flagged by users as possibly abusive. And it turns over to law enforcement metadata, including critical account and location information. So, again, it really comes down to whether or not you consider that to be private. Yeah.

And also given, like, a lot of other news that's happened with Meta and Mark Zuckerberg, that just reverses everything that they said they were going to do. So it's also, I feel, an extension of that is, do I believe they're actually going to stick with this thing? Are they just going to change it? I mean, I think it's reasonable to look at how companies historically have moved. When they say things, when they say one thing and then do the, do the, do the, opposite. I think all of that plays into the question of like whether or not you're comfortable with them having information about you that could potentially wind you in jail. This is not a hypothetical.

We'll talk more about this in a moment, but like that has happened. Conversations people had on Facebook platforms have led to them being in prison. So like that's a, in my book, that's like you're, you're giving quite a bit of trust to these platforms. And, you know, as I said, meta owns Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and also works with a sprawling network of third parties and contractors, sometimes in like very opaque ways. And so my sense is that meta is like, oh, well, WhatsApp itself is encrypted. So that means it's private. And then conveniently leave out that users who are concerned about their privacy might also

be concerned about how and what data is then being shared with third parties. Like I think that Facebook is like, well, we're encrypted. So that's private. and how Facebook and other companies access data, it's still private. I think that's their play there. Yeah. And it does feel very like, I don't know,

kind of shuffling it. Like even going back to that ad, the meta symbols very small in that ad, I have to say. I think they were like, we know, people know that we've gone through these scandals, but also kind of shuffling it off to the user of, should figure out. This was on you.

If you were worried about privacy, then I don't know why you didn't take whatever steps. Yeah. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guide, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman,

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Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard Yard. But they're open to change.

Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle aged. One erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the Eye Heart Radio. app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Cuba me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny.

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, Follow Timbo Slic Life 12 and the TikTok podcast network on TikTok. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged. It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast's Superhuman documented it all,

embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I remember when WhatsApp was bought out and everybody was really upset because I think at that point, a lot of protests and, like, a lot of gatherings had happened through different messengers like WhatsApp because it were supposed to be encrypted. And then Facebook bottom out and everybody lost it. I remember people talking about what to do next. And that's when Signal kind of got its big boost, if I remember correctly.

I mean, they've always been pretty big, but it got the bigger boost because WhatsApp, eventually became known as now it's coming be Facebook. And then they were real quiet about it. They made sure not to change the brand or the logo. And then they were just, I think, really hoping people would forget who owned WhatsApp. And I feel like the same way like you were talking about, when people start clicking on doing the messengers and you get the little, you have to read this. This is our terms of service. And no one reads that.

Let's be real honest. It's hard to even decipher. I actually had a similar incident with like my loans and when everything was popping off about DOS. or DOGE, doing those weird things and looking at the loans and everybody's coming out with,

hey, that's illegal. Y'all told us if it gets breached by organizations like this, then our loans has to be forgiven. My specific loan site came back with a whole agreement

that it tells me, by the way, a third party can get access if given permission by blah, blah, blah. If you agree to this, you can log in. If you don't,

you can't log in, period. But like, what, like, let's like be so for real. Why would you have like read with a, first of all, you're not an attorney, you're not a lawyer, you're not a contract expert. You don't have all day to read sometimes what is like 30 pages of fine print. Like literally there are artists and activists who have printed out the terms of service that you have to like, you know, agree to. And it'll be pages and pages and pages long. That's not a reasonable, it's not reasonable to expect you to be able to read and understand all of that just to get information about your loan.

So like, let's be, like, be for real. They're literally holding your stuff hostage. I feel like that's also, I feel like this was a thing with Facebook, especially when they started changing terms. And like, yeah, we have, if you want to log in, you can. But you have to give us access to your computer, your information. We have, we have ownership of all your pictures that you're posting. Like, I feel like they were kind of the beginning of that as well.

So it's so funny that you say this because in 2021, this all sort of came to a head when Apple and Facebook kind of had a just. about this very thing, right? So Apple made this update to their app store, which gave users privacy labels that showed all the different data that that app will link to you. So when WhatsApp, owned by Meta, was in the app store, Apple published this information that's like, oh, here's the data that this app will link to you. And people were like, wait a minute, I was told this was private. Like, why are you linking so much data to me? So then after that, WhatsApp updated their privacy policy, which inadvertently highlighted their years-old policy of sharing certain user data

like phone numbers with Facebook. So people who were concerned about their privacy obviously freaked out. And then Ireland hit WhatsApp with a record $266 million fine for an alleged lack of transparency over how it shares data with Facebook. So when Apple actually gave users the tool to be like, oh, I can make an informed decision transparently about how my data is shared on this app. People were like, no, I don't actually like that. Like, it really revealed that perhaps WhatsApp is not as private as some of these ads would have us believed.

Yes. And so going back to the ad where I was like, Bridget, I would love if we could talk about this. It's a WhatsApp ad. And I thought it was about abortion. But I've seen it since. now I'm like, okay, it's just the medical situation. It's never clearly stated. It's an abortion or anything like that. But the fact that my mind immediately went to, oh, this is, they're talking

about abortion or like kind of implying abortion. And I was, I recoiled so viscerally because I was like, no, that's, that's terrible. Like, we can't be telling people this. And they, have like a nice little, they show people typing and all the letters get all mixed up with numbers and stuff like that so you can't see what they're typing. But I think that goes to show the concerns a lot of us have of this technology that's telling you like, oh no, it's private. You can do this thing that has unfortunately become dangerous or risky for a lot of people. and my mind immediately was like abortion. No, that's bad. Yeah, I saw the ad too.

I also, I mean, I think they were trying to like, you're not seeing things. Like, they don't come out and say it, but I had the same interpretation of that ad as you did. And I think it's just, I think people should just know what's up about what's that. Like, they should understand like what is actually happening because if I were to use any analogy to explain it, I would say there's private in that you told your good girlfriend. something and she took it to her grave and she never told a soul. And then there's private like that you told your good girlfriend something and she shared it with her husband. And it's one thing when we're talking about like a juicy secret. It's another and we're talking about something that unfortunately like could get you locked up. And you know,

when it when it comes to abortion, we know that Facebook does have a bit of a track record with this. So Facebook turned over the chats of a mother and daughter to Nebraska police after they were served with a warrant as part of an investigation into an illegal abortion. So they notably, these two women were not using WhatsApp. They were using Facebook Messenger. But I do think it shows some insight into how this all works because, as I said, it's all the same umbrella company met up. So in June, before Roe was overturned, Facebook gave the police department in Norfolk, Nebraska,

access to their private messages that Jessica Burgess and her then 17-year-old daughtered shared about how to obtain abortion pills. Burgess ended up getting sentenced to two years in prison and her daughter got 90 days. The platform that they were using to communicate, Facebook Messenger, does offer end-to-add encryption just like WhatsApp does, meaning that the chats between the two women

were only visible to them on their phones and not readable by Facebook or any government entity that makes a legal request to the company. But that option is really only available to folks who are using Facebook Messenger on the app on a mobile device, not like on desktop or on a laptop or something, and the messages are only encrypted

after users select the option to mark those chats as secret. So you can see how that's less secure than WhatsApp that has that as a default setting. If you have to go in and click secret on mobile to get that end-to-end encryption. And what's worse is that Facebook just immediately complied by giving these chats

over to the police, which they really don't have to do. Legal experts talk about, told the Guardian that Facebook could have thought the warrant in court. In other instances where tech companies have refused to comply with government demands, Apple refused to comply with federal law enforcement's request to break into an iPhone involving the San Bernardino shooting back in 2016, and Facebook itself successfully refused to comply with a wiretapping request for messenger

calls back in 2018. So they don't have to give this information over to police, but they do, and they're able to have it. And that's that's the frightening thing. Because we use, all of us use this stuff. In some way or another, maybe not Facebook Messenger or maybe not WhatsApp, but it's just a concern with all of these platforms of, you know what, I thought this was something that was private.

Yeah. I'm going to jail or it's been turned over. We can talk about the fact that they have been hacked. so many, my WhatsApp has been hacked so many times. My messenger has been hacked so much. I was like, I, F this. I'm not doing this anymore. And I completely refuse to use it, except anytime anyone sends me a message, whether it's my partner or someone, you have to download it if you're not on the laptop.

And even on the laptop, you can't get it unless you do, you download the app and get another code, which is like, what? You're making me do this? So I actually included all the different instances of WhatsApp being hacked. There are many. There's many, many, many. At the last minute, I was like, well, hacking is different than, I mean, again, it's not different than privacy.

I made a game day decision to be like, let's exclude hacking from the conversation. But, yeah, what's that beginning hacked? Like, it's a real thing. I mean, if they want to say being, you know, like, it's secure and private and all these things, but like one goes in hand in hand, how am I going to trust you if every other day

I get a message from this person that's saying, hey, did you send me these things just because I opened an app? And it turns out that someone has hacked into my account. Like, obviously, if you can't even get like the security to keep my stuff okay, how do you have the ability to keep it private? Exactly. Just to be super clear, even if WhatsApp, their encryption means that they cannot hand the content of your messages over to the police,

if the police were trying to build a case against you that relied on location data, like say, did you travel to XYZ location to obtain an abortion and you live in a place where you were not legally permitted to travel across state lines to do so? Or like, were you at XYZ protest? WhatsApp has metadata. So even if they can't give you, get the actual messages, they're fine giving metadata, which includes things like your location, your contacts, who you were messaging. They're fine to give that information over. And so, and they have that information. And so it's really about understanding privacy in a more holistic way. that it's not just about the content of your messages.

It's about how secure is its platform? Like, is it easily half? Is it hackable? Does it have a history of being hacked? You know, what kind of metadata are they collecting? How do they use that metadata? It's really about asking all of these background questions in addition to just like, how do they keep my content safe?

Right. And on top of that, it's also there are some things, some laws that we have that sort of allow for, them to be like, yeah, we can track you, right? Yeah, so I learned this in doing the research for this episode that thanks to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, they're basically able to track users without probable cause. In January 2022, an unsealed surveillance application revealed that WhatsApp started tracking seven users from China in November 2021 based on a request from USDA investigators.

They have collected data on who the users contacted and how often and when, and how they were using the app. And this is reportedly not an isolated thing, as federal agencies can use the electronic communications privacy act to covertly track users without submitting any probable cause or linking a user's number to their identity. And I should just add a sort of global note about this whole thing is that WhatsApp has two different platforms,

regular WhatsApp and then WhatsApp business that's meant for small businesses to communicate that was rolled out in 2018. everything that I've said so far is really about regular WhatsApp and that's because WhatsApp's business platform is actually less private. So yeah, don't use that to talk

about anything. That's not the way I thought that was going to go. Well, I mean, it kind of makes sense because like if you're a business entity, you're communicating with so many different people in such a different way that like, I kind of get where they're coming from there but I just wanted to say that in case someone's like,

oh, I have, what? What's that business? Like, let me use it the way that Bridget told me. I should be using it. Like, that's a whole different beast. Yeah, I thought there was going to be an upgrade. It was not. Definitely downgrade.

Not business class. No. Because on a plane, it's like better. But it's worse. Not this one. Okay. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guide, not quite.

Unhumor me with Robert Smeagel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan, to Bob Odenkirk, to David Letterman, help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and headwriter, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. There's the worst singer in the group? The worst? Yeah.

Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard Yard. They're open.

Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle-aged, one erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Humor me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora.

And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-844-I-Hart to get started. That's 844-8-4-I-Hart.

Last night, a blown call changed the game. This morning, the internet lost its mind. Highlights are trending, opinions are flying, and nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where Sports Slice comes in. I'm Timbo. Every episode, we're cutting through the noise. Breaking down the plays, the controversies,

and the stories behind the headlines. We go straight to the source, the athlete themselves. Their locker room stories, their reactions, the stuff nobody gets to hear. The laughs, the drama, the triumphs, the moments that never make the highlight real. From viral moments to historic games, from buzzer beaters to controversial calls,

we break it down, give you context, and ask the questions everybody wants. answer. Sports Slice brings you closer to the action with stories told by the people who live them. Listen to Sports Slice on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slices Life 12 and the TikTok podcast network on TikTok. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged. It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast's superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and

with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the I-Hard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, well, we have been, you know, focusing on WhatsApp and surely all of these applications we could talk about. but, you know, WhatsApp in particular, how's it doing with privacy when it comes to privacy? So as I said, ultimately, WhatsApp, I would say,

is like pretty private, like good for privacy. Here's how Mozilla's privacy experts put it. From a technical perspective, no, WhatsApp itself is not really bad for privacy. WhatsApp uses strong end-to-end encryption for all texts, chats, and video calls. This is great. WhatsApp cannot read your messages or see your call. The flip side of this is Facebook, a company infamous for its vast and questionably ethical collection of so much data owns WhatsApp. This means that lots of metadata, things like purchase history, location, device ID, and more can be captured and shared with businesses advertising on WhatsApp.

So people looking for a true privacy-centered messaging app can find much better options. Yes. And speaking of, we have a better option. me up beautifully to talk about one of my favorite apps, and that is Signal. I am such a Signal fan girl. I have been a fan girl of Signal for a very long time. I remember the very first time I encountered Signal. I was like trying to date somebody and this person eventually became like a very good friend of mine. But initially I was like, oh, what's this platform? And I was telling a friend, like, oh, I met this person and they didn't give me their number. They were like, here's my signal. And my friend I was telling this to was like, are they in E-Colm?

eco-terrorist. Because back then, the only person who would have signal on their phone was an eco-terrorist. That is how long I've been with Signal. But Signal is amazing. It is free. Everyone listening should download Signal right now. And it is run by an incredible nonprofit that is helmed by this woman Meredith Whitaker, who is this bad-h-woman in technology, who does a lot of interesting writing on surveillance. I genuinely, like, deeply, deeply admire her. If you ever want to be really challenged in a good way, like watch up videos of her lectures. She's just a fascinating human being. And so Signal is generally considered to be more secure in private than WhatsApp

due to its just general, like, commitment to user privacy as a nonprofit and its open source nature. While WhatsApp uses end-to-end encryption, Signal goes further by not collecting any user metadata and being backed by this nonprofit organization, which generally does minimize the potential for that kind of data exploitation, right? And so whereas they're both using end-to-end encryption, WhatsApp does collect and share metadata. Signal does not.

They don't collect any of that. So that is definitely the better platform if you're talking about anything at all sensitive. And honestly, it's just a platform that I use. Like most of my conversations are happening on Signal. I'm going to insert this joke here. Unless you're dumb enough to send, messages to the people you're not supposed

to be sending like, you know, top secret information to journalists. If you're listening, Pete Heggsaf, we're talking about you. And you know what makes me mad about that? Is that that was the probably for a lot of Americans, that was probably the first time they had ever

heard about Signal. And Signal is so awesome. It's so great. They have such a great, like, mission. And it made me sad that the first encounter that a lot of people were having was with Pete. Hexeth, like, completely misusing it.

And even in some of the reporting about that, they were sort of trying to make it signals, like, mistake. Really? Like, oh, like, what is this shadowy app that they were using and how could this happen? And it's like, no, signal didn't do anything wrong. It was 100% user error. Right.

Honestly, I was really shocked that they use such a public, like, platform that is free. I'm like, you're the government. Don't you have your own kind of, like, chat? application that you used within your own people? Like, I don't, this, there's a lot I have questions about in this moment. I can answer that question for you. The answer is absolutely the United States government has, spends lots and lots and lots of money to develop and use super secure messaging apparatus.

Yeah, Signal is not the use case for this. If you're, if you're talking about, like, secret military plans. I do, I do love, like, I read the different conversations that were happening. I can't remember who it was. it might have been J.D. Vance, don't quote me on that, who is, like, only responding in thumbs up emojis. It's one of them that is like,

just stick a thumbs up there, and they'll get the gist. Like, I don't want to be in print on this one. Which, looking back was probably a smart idea. Yeah, like, level of, like, comedy here. It's just like, what is going on? But it feels right. It feels about right.

The disaster and doom in, like, a comedic form. Like, yeah, okay. That's where we are. Sometimes they got to laugh to keep from crying, am I right? It's true. I have to admit to you all, I wrote in a fan fiction lately, I had a plot point about this whole thing. The headset thing?

Yes, because I was trying to figure out how to make something that was incredibly stupid happen in the government. And I was like, well, it already happened. Right. So I can point to real life evidence and be like, you know what? I would have thought it was too stupid. stupid. Oh my gosh. But yeah.

It did happen. So I just wrote it in and it kind of saved me a whole headache of figuring out how bad next. I mean, it's true. Like all of the things that they have predicted this level of stupidity, it's no longer funny because it's like right on. Yeah. Like this should not be this real. You know stuff is bad when like if you were writing a fictional work about it and you would be like, oh, that's too on the nose. Nobody's going to buy that.

It's like, no, homie. It happened ripped from the headlines. You're good. Well, you know, one thing that has, one of the reasons I really wanted to talk about this, Bridget, is that I was so, when I saw that commercial, I was so worried about people believing it. Like, you know, like I was really concerned that people would be like, oh, this is a, this is a secure interface that I can use and getting in trouble

or having this really terrible experience. And I do know what you were talking about earlier that a lot of people do have that sort of burnout of like, you know what, they already know, they already have it, what's even worth trying. But it really, it really were, me when I saw it. And I think given the environment we live in now, that it is something that we need to talk about and be aware of and be educated on. Absolutely. I'm glad that you're bringing it to the

Smenti listeners because it is important. And it can always be really hard to tell marketing from reality, especially with this because it is a little bit murky. But I, but I I guess I would just offer, like, the reality is that we're in a world where our rights are being rolled back, where protest is criminalized, health care is criminalized. In a world like that, privacy and security is not just a tech issue. It is a survival issue. And we have to protect our data and our conversations the way that we also protect each other. I know that someone listening out there is like, Bridget, you sound paranoid. It is not about being paranoid. It's about being prepared and being cognizant of like the reality that we are in today. And so if using signal

over WhatsApp and getting into the habit of doing that, if that could potentially save somebody listening a whole lot of stress, I want to to offer that. Like there are small meaningful changes that we can make to keep things more secure and private that don't cost us anything that we should be doing. And I honestly think like if you are someone who is, I don't even know how put this. Like, I am like prepper minded a little bit, right? Like, I'm like, oh, the vibes are bad. The vibes are weird. Like, better get prepared.

I think right now, the big thing we should be preparing for is cyber security. And like, like, like, I think that it's probably more likely that we are going to see digital attacks and cyber attacks, probably more so than other kinds of things you could be prepping for. And so preparing and getting yourself situated for those kinds of attacks is easy and free. It doesn't take a lot.

And so I would say if you're feeling unnerved and uncertain in these times, start there. Like, sad as something that you can manage. It does not take a lot to get yourself in a good, protected place. Yes. And you over on your podcast, there are no girls on the internet and other episodes on Sinty. You've done a lot of, a lot of episodes about that, about how that can look and what you can do. So thank you, as always. Oh, my gosh.

Thanks for having me. My pleasure. And if you want more conversations about tech and privacy, check out the newest season of Mozilla's IRL podcast, all about those very topics. Yes, yes. And thank you. We always love having you on. Thank you for taking this topic suggestion. But yes, where can the good listeners find you?

You can find me at the IRL podcast on my podcast, there are no girls on the internet, and on Instagram at Bridget Marie in D.C. Yes. Well, looking forward to next time. I'm Bridget. In the meantime, if you would like to contact those listeners, you can, you can email us at hello at stuffwoman never told you. You can find us on blue sky at mom's stuff. Podcast or on Instagram and TikTok at Stuff Whenever Told You. We're also on YouTube and we have a book. You can get wherever you get your books. Thanks as always to our super producer, Christina, executive, Bruce of Maya and a contributor, Joey. Thank you. And thanks to you for listening. Stuff Whenever Told You's production by Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart radio, you can check out the Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and Friends.

Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, S&L's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get. your podcasts. Last night, a blown call changed a game. This morning, the internet lost its mind, and nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where SportsSlice comes in. I'm Timbo, and every episode, we're cutting through the noise, breaking down the biggest moments in sports and giving you the real story behind the headlines. And we're going straight to the source, the athletes themselves, their locker room stories, their reactions in the moment, and the stuff nobody gets to hear. Listen to Sports Slice on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slica Life 12 in the TikTok podcast network on TikTok.

Life is full of hurdles. So how do you keep going? On Hurtle with Emily Abadi, we're talking with the most inspiring women in sports and wellness from professional athletes, coaches, and Olympic champions about the challenges that shape them and the mindset that keeps them moving forward. At our level, at this scale, being able to fail in front of the entire world. Like, I can do anything. I can do anything. Listen to Hurtle with Emily Abadi on the I-Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal, but encouraged.

It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast's Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.