After originally being announced in May, group video and audio calling is now live in the latest versions of WhatsApp for iOS and Android. For iOS users, this feature comes ahead of iOS 12’s release this fall with support for Group FaceTime calls…
In the run-up to the US mid-term elections, we’re seeing social media companies making greater efforts to address the problem of fake news. Twitter recently said that it was suspending work on its verification program to devote all its attention to addressing fake news, and WhatsApp has now announced its own measures …
Facebook-owned WhatsApp is rolling out a new feature for administrators in groups. Similar to a feature offered by Telegram, this gives administrators the ability to be the only users in a group capable of sending messages…
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony to Congress was the video stream that launched a thousand memes – and now meme creators will get another opportunity. The European Parliament has announced that its meeting with Zuckerberg tomorrow will also be livestreamed …
WhatsApp for iOS has been updated with new features that help bridge the gap between it and other Facebook-owned applications. The new version also includes new features for group chats…
WhatsApp has today shared its updated privacy policy and terms of service. Additionally, the messaging service has made a FAQ sheet available for its upcoming data download tool, detailing how it will work.
Police investigations are often aided by the fact that most criminals are dumb, but one drug dealer who helpfully posted a partial photo of his fingerprint in a WhatsApp message still set a challenge for police …
Facebook ran into trouble following its acquisition of WhatsApp back in 2014. It appeared to backtrack on an earlier promise not to share data between the two services, and was later warned that it may be breaking the law in the UK and elsewhere …
Signal has announced that WhatsApp cofounder Brian Acton is providing $50M in funding for future development of the secure messaging app …
WhatsApp appears to be testing a new method of catching spam and hoax messages, like the oft-circulated one claiming that a subscription is required for continued use of the service. Two elements have been spotted …
We saw last month that WhatsApp was testing the ability to recall sent messages, and it is now rolling out the feature to all users …
WhatsApp today has released a new location sharing feature for its popular app. This latest feature allows users to share their location with other contacts using end-to-end encryption.
Software engineer Rob Heaton has identified a vulnerability in WhatsApp that could allow a stalker to work out when two contacts are communicating via the service.
He managed to exploit it by writing a Chrome extension requiring just four lines of Javascript …
After long using Apple’s emoji set on both iOS and Android, WhatsApp has now created its own. That decision might make some kind of sense if it had decided to do something radically different, but instead it appears to have just created a close copy of Apple’s own designs.
You can see some direct comparisons above …
If you’ve ever sent a WhatsApp reply to the wrong thread, sharing your pet-name for your partner with a business colleague, or you’ve engaged in a spot of drunk-messaging, it looks like you’ll soon have the opportunity to recall the message either before or after it is read …
Starting today, popular calling and messaging service WhatsApp is rolling out some new text-based status features for its iOS app and the web.
Popular messaging app WhatsApp announced today that it has reached one billion daily active users as the company also shared some other stats on how the service is being used. The one billion active daily users is up from the one billion monthly actives it announced last year, and monthly users too are up:
WhatsApp has received a small update that brings in albums, camera filters, and a quick reply feature to the messaging application.
Antitrust regulators in Europe have fined Facebook €110 ($122M) for misleading them over its acquisition of the secure messaging service WhatsApp.
The European Commission said that the fine would have been more than twice as high but for Facebook’s acknowledgement of wrong-doing and cooperation with the investigation …
Popular messaging service WhatsApp is experiencing a major outage this evening. According to a variety of reports on social media, users are unable to access the service and cannot send or receive any messages…
British Home Secretary Amber Rudd – in charge of police policy in the UK – has told the BBC that Apple ‘cannot get away with’ apps that offer unbreakable encryption following last week’s terrorist attack in London.
Rudd was speaking after it was revealed that Khalid Masood accessed WhatsApp two minutes before ploughing through pedestrians on Westminster Bridge in a rented car, killing three of them, before fatally stabbing a police officer guarding the Houses of Parliament.
She described end-to-end encrypted messaging as used by WhatsApp and Apple’s Messages app as ‘completely unacceptable’ …
Update: Telegram has issued a statement to the fixed vulnerability.
A critical security flaw was exposed in WhatsApp today, some media wrongly claimed Telegram had the same issue. No: https://t.co/HwDLbiBvZS
— Telegram Messenger (@telegram) March 15, 2017
A recently disclosed vulnerability by Check Point proved that both WhatsApp and Telegram were susceptible to particularly nefarious online attacks. While most attacks only garner tidbits of user data, these allowed attackers to gain full control of user accounts. Once in, attackers could download previously shared photos, contact information, and even more importantly gain access to a user’s friends accounts as well. Both companies acknowledged and released fixes to help patch the web client vulnerabilities.
WhatsApp is introducing a new feature in its app called Status that uses a similar format to Snapchat Stories, TechCrunch reports. Like messaging through WhatsApp, however, Status will bring encryption to the popular format.
Update: Updated with a response from WhatsApp, below.
A security researcher has found a backdoor in the end-to-end encryption system used by the WhatsApp messaging service. The vulnerability would allow Facebook to read messages sent through the supposedly-secure system, as well as making it possible for the company to comply with court orders to make messages available to government bodies.
While end-to-end encryption would normally mean that not even the company operating the service can decrypt messages, only the intended recipient, the specific implementation used in WhatsApp includes a major security hole …