Save for one or two family members who uses an Android device, all my my friends, family, colleagues, etc. use iDevices. And, neither I nor they (to my knowledge) have ever encountered any geographic restrictions at all when using iMessage.

I'm certainly not a criminal, nor a narcissist. Unlike Apple iMessage, WhatsApp has a co-product (FB) which is a overblown (in my opinion) massive environment of stuff that I'm just not interested in and don't want FB to "know" about. As far as I know, Apple isn't building an automated dataset based on my preferred affiliations, connections, group memberships, likes, photo shares, etc. that transit through iMessage. FB does, IMHO. Otherwise, why would they feel the need to "link" What's App and FB and, at least in the past, have the privacy opt out between What's App and FB? So, I don't want to be part of it. Indeed, one pays for iMessage when one buys an iDevice. Whereas, What's App is free. Didn't someone say when the thing is free, you're the product being sold. I just prefer not to support that.

I was simply asking if there exists a workaround to use What's App and avoid FB mining my What's App data. Maybe the "price" of What's App is giving up your data, if so, that's a simple choice, unless there's a workaround.