So many people confuse encryption with authentication...
Suppose you&#x27;re a whistleblower trying to contact a reporter using WhatsApp. You&#x27;ve never met in person, so you send a message over WhatsApp, &quot;Hello!&quot; The reporter replies, &quot;Hi!&quot;
You now have a big problem -- you don&#x27;t KNOW that it was the reporter who replied to you, it might&#x27;ve been a nefarious 3rd party who already intercepted your original message and is now replying.
WhatsApp&#x27;s only mechanism for checking if that&#x27;s the case is comparing some numbers out-of-band (e.g. in person, with QR codes).
What&#x27;s even more tragic is that WhatsApp doesn&#x27;t track&#x2F;show which contacts you may have already authenticated.. good luck remembering which of your 100 contacts are verified