New: WhatsApp announces that they are adding advertising.

Ugh.

As a researcher working on targeted / 0click attacks (including a few that have been done over WhatsApp..) it's hard to see how this works without opening up a fat new attack surface to be probed.

I'm also worried about the ways that these advertising signals get used for tracking people in new parts of their digital lives.

And it bugs me that it's going to be really hard if not impossible to use WhatsApp in a privacy-first way.

What are your thoughts?

Writeup: https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/16/whatsapp-is-adding-ads-to-the-status-screen/