Why WhatsApp is asking you to submit your email address

In addition to the telephone number needed for WhatsApp to work, the chat app now also lets you add your email address for security purposes. — Photo: Fabian Sommer/dpa

SAN JOSE: WhatsApp is now letting users add their email addresses to the chat app – but should you be giving this up to Meta so easily?

After all, this is the company that lost the data – including email addresses and phone numbers – of more than 500 million users to hackers, triggering a wave of email and SMS phishing attempts.