WhatsApp Trivia
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39 free WhatsApp trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This WhatsApp trivia quiz covers the messaging app that three billion people open every month. It starts with the origin story: two ex-Yahoo engineers who were turned down by Facebook, an iPhone bought in January 2009, an app that was only supposed to show statuses, and the push-notification update that accidentally turned it into a messenger. From there it follows the $250,000 seed round, the Sequoia investments, the $1 annual fee, and the February 2014 day Facebook agreed to pay roughly $19 billion for the company. The middle of the quiz is about how WhatsApp actually works and what it added when: the Signal Protocol encryption finished in 2016, WhatsApp Web and its QR code, voice and video calls, stickers, Status, Communities, Channels, edit windows, forwarding limits, the 2 GB file cap and 32-person calls. The final stretch covers the fights: the EU's misleading-information fine, the NSO Group spyware lawsuit, the founders' departures for Signal, the 2021 privacy-policy revolt, and the countries that have blocked the app. Questions range from easy to expert. Every answer was verified against the Wikipedia articles on WhatsApp and Jan Koum, and each explanation adds a detail you can use at your next quiz night.
30 of 39 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01WhatsApp's two founders, Jan Koum and Brian Acton, had both previously worked at which internet company?
Yahoo
Yahoo: Koum dropped out of San Jose State to work there as an infrastructure engineer, and he and Acton stayed nine years before leaving together in 2007.
Q 02What color do WhatsApp's two check marks turn once the recipient has read a message?
Blue
Blue: WhatsApp added read receipts in November 2014, turning the double grey ticks blue once a message is read; one grey tick means sent and two mean delivered.
Q 03Which 2009 iPhone feature helped turn WhatsApp, first built for posting statuses, into a messaging app?
Push notifications
Push notifications let WhatsApp ping friends whenever someone changed their status, and people began using the pings to chat, so Koum added real messaging in WhatsApp 2.0.
Q 04How much seed funding did Brian Acton raise for WhatsApp from five former colleagues in 2009?
$250,000
$250,000: Acton persuaded five former colleagues to invest that sum in October 2009 and formally joined WhatsApp as a co-founder on November 1 that year.
Q 05Where in WhatsApp did Meta start showing ads in 2025?
The Updates tab
The Updates tab: the move broke with the founders' old stance against ads, though Meta kept ads out of personal chats.
Q 06Which venture firm, through partner Jim Goetz, invested about $8 million in WhatsApp in 2011?
Sequoia Capital
Sequoia Capital: Goetz spent months persuading the founders to take the money, and in 2013 Sequoia put in another $50 million.
Q 07In February 2014, a year after a funding round valued it at $1.5 billion, Facebook agreed to buy WhatsApp for how much?
$19 billion
$19 billion was the agreed price, mostly paid in Facebook shares, and the deal's value later rose to about $22 billion.
Q 08About how many staff did WhatsApp have in early 2013, when roughly 200 million people were using it?
50
50: its engineers ran the service on Erlang and FreeBSD servers, a lean setup that let a tiny team keep a giant messaging network running.
Q 09Which research app that Facebook used to monitor competitors' usage influenced its decision to buy WhatsApp?
Onavo
Onavo, a VPN app Facebook bought in 2013, showed which apps people used, and the same data later steered Facebook toward planning a rival to Houseparty.
Q 10After dropping its $1-a-year fee in 2016, how did WhatsApp say it hoped to make money instead?
Business messaging
Business messaging: Koum said many users had no credit card to pay the fee, and banks or airlines could instead message customers, with no third-party ads.
Q 11When buying WhatsApp in 2014, what did Facebook tell EU regulators was technically impossible?
Automatically matching accounts
Automatically matching accounts: WhatsApp's 2016 terms let it link users' phone numbers to Facebook, and the EU fined Facebook €110 million for the misleading claim.
Q 12Brian Acton left WhatsApp in September 2017 to fund a nonprofit behind which rival messaging app?
Signal
Signal: Acton's initial $50 million in 2018 turned the small app into a nonprofit foundation that could finally grow its team.
Q 13Which Silicon Valley practice let Jan Koum keep collecting Facebook stock in 2018 after announcing his exit?
Rest and vest
Q 21The UK government lost a 2023 court battle over handing which former prime minister's WhatsApp messages to an official inquiry?
Boris Johnson
Boris Johnson: the Cabinet Office wanted to withhold messages it judged irrelevant, but judges ruled it was for the Covid inquiry's chair to decide.
Q 22Which Facebook cryptocurrency, announced in 2019, was meant to let people send money through WhatsApp and Messenger?
Libra
Libra: French and German officials objected almost at once, demanding scrutiny before a digital currency tied to WhatsApp and Messenger could launch.
Q 23On November 30, 2015, WhatsApp started making links to which rival messaging app unclickable?
Telegram
Rest and vest: Koum had reportedly clashed with Facebook over WhatsApp's direction, yet stayed on its payroll so his remaining stock could keep vesting.
Q 14As of 2025, about how many people used WhatsApp every month?
3 billion
3 billion: Meta has used that reach to spread its AI, building the Meta AI assistant straight into WhatsApp chats in 2024.
Q 15WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption uses a protocol developed by which organisation?
Open Whisper Systems
Open Whisper Systems finished encrypting every WhatsApp message and call in April 2016, so not even WhatsApp itself can read them.
Q 16After false rumours spread on WhatsApp were linked to mob lynchings in 2018, what did WhatsApp start limiting?
Forwarding
Forwarding: WhatsApp capped how many chats a message could be sent on to, and in 2020 it said a tighter limit had cut highly forwarded messages by 70 percent.
Q 17What do users scan with their phone to log in to WhatsApp Web, which launched in January 2015?
A QR code
A QR code linked the browser to the phone, which at first had to stay online, and iPhone owners couldn't pair it at launch because of Apple's platform limits.
Q 18By June 2016, how many calls a day did WhatsApp handle?
100 million
100 million: Koum had said WhatsApp was working on calling days after the 2014 Facebook deal, and it took about a year to launch.
Q 19Meta rolled its new MLow audio codec out to WhatsApp calls in 2024 mainly to help which callers?
People on old phones
People on old phones: MLow keeps calls clear on older devices and weak connections, where Opus, the open codec Meta had used before, struggled at low bitrates.
Q 20What do WhatsApp recipients see when a sent message is edited?
An 'edited' label
An 'edited' label: WhatsApp added editing in 2023 to catch up with rival apps that already had it, allowing changes for 15 minutes after sending.
Telegram: the block also hit links into Telegram chat rooms, making it much harder to send WhatsApp users into a Telegram group.
Q 24Which Israeli surveillance firm did WhatsApp sue in 2019 over spyware injected via voice calls?
NSO Group
NSO Group: WhatsApp said the firm's spyware targeted more than 1,400 users in 20 countries, among them human rights defenders and journalists.
Q 25When WhatsApp began switching on end-to-end encryption in November 2014, which phones got it first?
Android phones
Android phones: the encryption arrived switched on by default, so ordinary users were protected without changing a single setting.
Q 26Before founding WhatsApp, Jan Koum and Brian Acton took a year off to travel South America and play which sport?
Ultimate frisbee
Ultimate frisbee: after one game in 2009, Koum talked about quitting the crash-prone app, and Acton told him to give it a few more months.
Q 27By 2018, which country was WhatsApp's largest market, with more than 200 million users?
India
India: after false rumours spread on the app were linked to a wave of lynchings there in 2018, WhatsApp promised to curb its abuse.
Q 28In September 2017, security researchers reported WhatsApp completely blocked in which country?
China
China: in April 2024 the government also had Apple pull WhatsApp from the Chinese App Store, cutting iPhone users off from downloading it.
Q 29In May 2016, a court order forced mobile providers in which country to block WhatsApp for 72 hours?
Brazil
Brazil: a judge ordered the block after WhatsApp's owner failed to hand over information sought in a drug-trafficking investigation.
Q 30Which country's army banned WhatsApp in December 2021, telling personnel to use the home-grown Threema instead?
Switzerland
Switzerland: the Swiss army told personnel to switch to the Swiss-made Threema, citing concern that U.S. authorities could reach WhatsApp data under the CLOUD Act.