Quarter of the world now using WhatsApp

Facebook-owned messaging app, WhatsApp recently reached a new milestone after it was announced that it is now used by more than two billion people worldwide.

With an estimated 7.5 billion people on the planet, WhatsApp is now used by quarter of the world’s population.

WhatsApp has used the milestone to reiterate the importance of encrypting its users’ messages – a practise that is coming under increasing amounts of pressure from lawmakers around the world. Governments argue that being unable to read people’s messaged makes it harder to discover when the messaging app is being used to facilitate terrorism, child exploitation and other crimes.

CEO of WhatsApp, Will Cathcart says: “For all of human history, people have been able to communicate privately with each other and we don’t think that should go aay in a modern society.”