Facebook owned messaging service WhatsApp has announced that it now has over 2 billion users worldwide.
"We are excited to share that, as of today, WhatsApp supports more than two billion users around the world," WhatsApp said in a blog post.
The announcement places WhatsApp which is the world most popular messaging service second to parent app Facebook which has over 2.5 billion users.
Also Read: Facebook And WhatsApp Will Share Users’ Private Data With The UK Police
The company also used the opportunity to pledge that they will ever remain committed in providing end-to-end encryption to all those using its service.
"Strong encryption is a necessity in modern life," WhatsApp said. "We will not compromise on security because that would make people less safe. For even more protection, we took with top security experts, employ industry leading technology to stop misuse as well as provide controls and ways to report issues - without sacrificing privacy."
Last year, Facebook made plans to merge WhatsApp with Instagram and Facebook Messenger so as to create a cross platform chat between users of the Facebook family of apps. The social giant also rebranded WhatsApp to "WhatsApp from Facebook" and also Instagram to "Instagram from Facebook" as part of it plans to merge all three platforms.
Renowned reverse engineer, Jane Manchun Wong, last year shared screenshots that showed Facebook was working on returning the Messenger feature back to the Facebook main app.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook's plans to merge all of three messaging services has sparked some anti trust experts. The FTC is also probing Facebook for potentially anti-competitive conduct in which investigators are looking into its acquisition of WhatsApp and Instagram.
The catch here is that Facebook will use an end-to-end encryption on its new service...when it merges the three platforms, which has raised concerns for law enforcement including U.S Attorney General William Barr, who says criminals would hide under the platform to perpetrate crimes.