The exit plan from WhatsApp is quite simple. Start by installing Signal and setting it up – it takes only a couple of minutes. Then, resume any WhatsApp conversations on Signal if that person is already a Signal user. If they are not, then switch to regular text messaging and gently suggest to that person to switch over to Signal.

Sadly for me, this doesn’t really work for some relatives as

• They live abroad and the cost of sending text messages abroad is not insignificant
• Some are so tech un-savvy that even installing a new app by themselves is too much.

All I can do for those relatives is to leave WhatsApp installed but take away basically every permission I can, including running in the background.