I am part of a WhatsApp group, a friend set the group up so we could send out a message for anyone wanting to go for a ride out, it seems pretty good. I'm certainly no tech expert and I don't profess to fully understand what's going on on with these groups and how it would affect me, however, I empathise with peoples concerns about how much personal information these organisations gather and share without the user ever being aware. IMHO that mass covert monitoring and sharing of someones information, whether it be for marketing or more nefarious reasons, is wrong, but as you say, times are changing and this is now the world we live in, the only way we would ever stop it, and claim back control of our data is to live off grid, completely, end up on one of those Ben Fogle programmes, lol.