> People should really just assume every scrap of data they input into their phones is being sent to at least one company who will happily sell it to anyone who asks.
There are a number of apps that don’t let this information leave your device at all, or end-to-end encrypt it. You just have to find them.
Don't hope. Don't guess. Use apps from F-Droid. There is still a risk at the app level but it is much lower. On iOS, there is no such thing so you can't do that.
At the phone level, there are still opaque binary blobs, so don't trust blindly.
WhatsApp isn't compromised though, regardless of its parent entity. They'd rather have the user base not generating data for anyone than an independent WhatsApp.
There are a number of apps that don’t let this information leave your device at all, or end-to-end encrypt it. You just have to find them.