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 …
WhatsApp is competing directly with FaceTime in its latest update, which offers video calls with end-to-end encryption. The company appears to indirectly reference the iPhone in its blog post announcing the new feature.
We’re introducing this feature because we know that sometimes voice and text just aren’t enough. There’s no substitute for watching your grandchild take her first steps, or seeing your daughter’s face while she’s studying abroad. And we want to make these features available to everyone, not just those who can afford the most expensive new phones …
Facebook appeared to do something of a U-turn back in August, when it started collecting data from WhatsApp despite an earlier statement that its acquisition of the messaging app would not impact user privacy. It has now agreed to cease doing so in the UK after the government privacy watchdog warned it that it may be breaking the law, reports the FT.
Facebook has agreed to pause its collection of WhatsApp user data in the UK as a result of a probe by the Information Commissioner’s Office.
“We’ve set out the law clearly to Facebook, and we’re pleased that they’ve agreed to pause using data from UK WhatsApp users for advertisements or product improvement purposes,” Elizabeth Denham, the information commissioner said.
The UK is not the only country where the legality of Facebook’s actions is being questioned …
When Facebook bought secure messaging app WhatsApp for $19B back in 2014, the company was careful to reassure users that its commitment to privacy would not be in any way compromised. WhatsApp has today updated its privacy policy to allow it to share both phone numbers and analytics data with Facebook.
Carrier FreedomPop has long been trying to tempt wireless users to its low-cost services by offering free and low-cost data and voice packages. Today, the company sweetens the deal with the launch of a new WhatsApp SIM that offers free unlimited access to the messaging app without a data plan.
WhatsApp may have this year followed iMessage’s lead in adopting end-to-end encryption for its messages, but a security researcher says that both still have a security flaw that can allow deleted messages to be recovered – either from the device, or remotely from iCloud backups.
Jonathan Zdziarski found the flaw in the current version of WhatsApp.
The latest version of the app tested leaves forensic trace of all of your chats, even after you’ve deleted, cleared, or archived them… even if you ‘Clear All Chats.’ In fact, the only way to get rid of them appears to be to delete the app entirely.
Zdziarski says that data was left behind no matter what deletion method was used: archiving, clearing or deleting threads – and he suggests that the same flaw is present in iMessages …
German site Macerkopf has been playing with the latest WhatsApp beta, and notes that it includes a new feature to share music with your contacts. You can share music stored locally on your device, as well as tracks from Apple Music.