CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on the Q4 2017 earnings call yesterday that WhatsApp now has 1.5 billion users and sees 60 billion messages sent per day.

That’s compared to 1.3 billion monthly users and 1 billion daily active users in July.

The massive growth makes Facebook’s choice to pay more than $19 billion to acquire WhatsApp look prescient. At the time in 2014, WhatsApp had just 450 million monthly active users and 315 million daily active users.

In a slight to Snapchat, Zuckerberg also noted that Instagram and WhatsApp are the No. 1 and No. 2 most popular Story-sharing products, referring to those apps’ clones of Snapchat Stories. Each now each has 300 million daily active users, compared to 178 million on Snapchat as a whole. He also mentions that Facebook’s research suggests that across apps, total social media posting to Stories will soon exceed that of feed posting.

People thought Facebook was crazy to pay such a high price. But messaging is the most critical and time-consuming activity on mobile. And if Facebook didn’t buy WhatsApp, Google probably would have, and messaging would be a two-horse race. Instead, Facebook is massively dominant everywhere but China, between the 1.3 billion-user Messenger and 1.5 billion-user WhatsApp.

Now Facebook is finally getting serious about monetizing WhatsApp with the recent launch of the WhatsApp for Business app. Facebook plans to charge business owners for additional commerce, customer service or broadcasting tools. And with such a massive audience, merchants will be clamoring for them.

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Source: TechCrunch

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The messenger app was used to send fake vouchers to people, purporting to be from trusted chains such as Asda, Tesco and Aldi.

The messages claimed to offer hundreds of pounds in savings so long as the user followed a link to an online survey asking for personal details.

The scam is a form of phishing, where fraudsters pose as reputable organisations to gain personal details.

Action Fraud, the UK’s national reporting centre for fraud and cyber crime, suggests anyone who has fallen victim to this scam to report it online or call 0300 123 2040.

So far, 33 people have come forward to report falling victim to the scam, although it is unclear how many people have received the message.

The scam works by using a link which appears almost identical to a supermarket chain’s legitimate website, but with one small difference.

For example, in the screenshot above, the d in Aldi is actually a ḍ – a Latin character with a small dot underneath the recognisable letter.

In the tweet below, the d in Asda has been replaced with đ – another character known as a crossed D.

According to Action Fraud, the survey urges victims to hand over their financial information.

If, however, a person tries to visit the homepages for Aldi misspelled with the dotted character it sends them to an error page for a different website entirely.

Meanwhile, at time of writing, attempting to access the misspelled Asda site brings up a warning in some browsers.

Upon completing the survey, the victim is urged to send the message to 20 other contacts in order to receive a £250 voucher.

This helps legitimise the scam, says Action Fraud, as rather than being sent from a random number, the WhatsApp message comes from a trusted contact.

However, it is unclear whether users may have been compromised simply by clicking on the link, as some on social media claimed that the message was shared without their contact’s consent.

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Users across the world were unable to send messages due to a server that went down.

Social media users saw the lighter side of things and took to Twitter share memes.

The ‘WhatsApp down’ hashtag is now trending.

WhatsApp is yet to release an official statement on the outage. Meanwhile, people took to Twitter to complain about problems with the messaging service.

“First we open WhatsApp, then we open Twitter to know if #whatsappdown is for everyone,” wrote a Twitter user. “Whatsapp is down, I repeat Whatsapp is down,” tweeted out another user.

Notably, this is not the first time that WhatsApp faced an outage. The Facebook-owned company was down globally early September as well, with users reporting problems accessing the app.

In May, WhatsApp was down for a few hours in all parts of the world including Malaysia to Spain, Germany and some other European countries. Severely affected countries included Belgium, the Netherlands, and Britain.

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Source: ewn.co.za with additional files from Indian Express

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People can’t send or receive messages using the Facebook-owned app, apparently because of a server problem.

The app doesn’t initially look broken, with chats and contacts able to load. But once a user is into a chat, the app just shows a “connecting” message that never resolves itself, and so new messages can’t be sent or received.

That also means there’s no easy fix to the problem, since it appears to be on WhatsApp’s side. Shutting and opening the app, for instance, just resets the connecting message but won’t stop it showing.
The website Down Detector showed a huge spike in problems with the app, suggesting that almost everyone is unable to get online. The problems are focused in western Europe and Asia, but were reported across the world.

There are relatively few reports of problems from the Americas, but that might simply be a result of the fact that timezones mean that many people there are currently asleep.

WhatsApp Web, which uses the phone’s connection, is also broken.

Unlike its owner Facebook, and many other large social networks and internet companies, WhatsApp doesn’t maintain a page to give users information when the site is down. It has an official Twitter account that is supposed to post when it is experiencing problems – but that appears to have fallen into disuse, and hasn’t posted since 2014.

It’s far from the first time that WhatsApp has gone down, and it now appears to be doing so on a roughly monthly basis. The outages are often resolved quickly, though can sometimes also take hours to fix.

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Source: Independent

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You’ll be able to delete messages up to seven minutes after you sent them, and they’ll disappear from conversations or group chats.

A new WhatsApp support article, spotted by The Next Web, reveals that both sender and receiver will need the latest WhatsApp for this feature to work. The feature is rolling out gradually to WhatsApp users this week.

To delete messages you’ll get a new option after you select delete, allowing you to “delete for everyone” instead of just from your own device. While the feature appears to be rolling out, it’s not fully live just yet.

WhatsApp does warn that “recipients may see your message before it’s deleted or if deletion was not successful,” so it’s not a guarantee. It’s also possible that WhatsApp users will still see messages in notifications before they’re deleted.

Either way, this is a good addition for those mistaken messages or alcohol-induced ones. Just remember it might not always work, and WhatsApp won’t notify you if it does fail.

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Source: The Verge

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The new feature will be available on both Android and iPhone soon, and it’s accessed the same way you’d normally send your location. But now you’ll have the option not just to put a pin on the map where you are, but to let them track you continuously for a duration of your choosing. (A version of this feature was tested earlier this year.)

Fifteen minutes, an hour and 8 hours seem to be the three lengths of time you can choose from, though of course, you can also turn off location sharing manually if you reach your destination or wish to conceal your movements.

Snapchat and Foursquare have their own versions of live location sharing as well, but the everyday messaging space seems like the best fit for me.

One use for this that seems actually quite helpful is making sure someone gets home all right. There are a few safety apps out there already, but this is a simpler way to keep track of someone if you can’t walk or drive them home yourself. Plus, it’s a widely used cross-platform app that isn’t Messenger. Unfortunately, WhatsApp is still the ugliest of all the chat apps, but what can you do?

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Source: TechCrunch

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According to the police, the medium on which the fake message emanated from, WhatsApp, has made it difficult for the Cyber Crime Unit to trace.

[contextly_sidebar id=”arOiX1tpRhmeiWOzJ56fGNWIwuVsK2I2″]There were reports on social media about a supposed terror attack at the Accra Mall on Sunday. However, the police in a statement refuted the reports.

Investigations into the fake terror alert started on Sunday, per a statement from the police.

Despite the technical challenges, the Cyber Crime Unit says it is working vigorously to apprehend the perpetrators given the serious implications for the security of the whole country.

In an interview with Citi News, the Director-General, Public Affairs Unit of the Police, ACP David Eklu, said  “the experts are telling me they might have some challenges in identifying who put up this information, but they are experts so I will leave that to them.”

“Apparently, the news emanated from WhatsApp, which makes it difficult for the experts to trace those who put out this information. But investigations have been initiated to get the persons involved, but it depends on how fast they would get the right information,” ACP Eklu noted.

Ghana’s Criminal Code states that, the circulation of any statement, rumor or report which is likely to cause fear and alarm to the public or disturb the public peace is a misdemeanor.

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By: Ann-Shirley Ziwu/citifmonline.com/Ghana

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Users have faced problems with the app for more than a week with services dropping in and out.

At times, it has been completely blocked and only accessible via virtual private networks (VPNs) which circumvent China’s internet firewall.

WhatsApp is Facebook’s only product allowed to operate in mainland China.

Facebook’s main social media service and its Instagram image sharing app are not available on the mainland.

Services disrupted

The BBC’s China based correspondents said the WhatsApp messaging service started going offline more than a week ago.

A test of its services on Tuesday showed users in China could not send video messages or photographs to people outside China.

The disruption follows restrictions on WhatsApp video chats and photographs in July, which were later lifted.

The tightening of online censorship comes as China steps up security ahead of the Communist Party’s national congress which is held every five years.

“The run-up period to a gathering is a normally a time of greater restrictions of all kinds to assure that the critical Party Congress is held under ideal social conditions and is not disrupted”, Robert Lawrence Kuhn, long-time advisor to China’s leaders and multinational corporations told the BBC.

However, he said it is not yet clear whether the restrictions will be relaxed as has happened after previous party congresses, adding that many analysts do not believe they will be.

WhatsApp has declined to comment on the latest clampdown.

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Source: BBC

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Taha Hussain, from Slough, Berkshire, also made a film in Windsor, saying a statue of the Queen “will be toppled” like the one of Saddam Hussain in Iraq.

The 21-year-old was convicted of seven counts of disseminating terrorist publications on YouTube and WhatsApp.

He was jailed for four and a half-years at the Old Bailey in London.

Hussain, of Langtree Avenue, attended “road shows” and encouraged others to “prepare or commit acts of terror” in the two years before his arrest in August 2016, the trial at Kingston Crown Court previously heard.

He used a phone emblazoned with so-called Islamic State’s black flag to post the videos.

In June 2016, he made a drive-by video around the area of Cavalry Barracks in Hounslow, where the 1st Battalion Irish Guards are based.

Hussain was heard to say: “We are outside the British barracks today, as you can see, the baby butchers of the Muslims.”

The occupants of the car were heard to shout: “Allah is the greatest.”

Another video filmed in a car driving around Windsor shows Hussain saying: “So you see the statue of the Queen here, like the statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled, so will the statue of the Queen.”

He also distributed videos and audio files on topics that included attempting to justify the Charlie Hebdo murders and the Paris attacks in 2015.

The court heard Hussain has expressed remorse for his actions and a willingness to embark on a deradicalisation programme.

His defence counsel Frida Hussain said: “This is a young man who was immersed into a world of this nature from a very early age and (during) his formative years.

“It is not too late for this young man to turn his life around.”

During sentencing, Judge Paul Dodgson described some of the evidence as “chilling”, particularly in light of recent terror attacks in the UK.

Judge Dodgson said: “I can only hope that your public renouncement of the aims of Isis and its allies is genuine and will lead you to take a new direction in the way you observe your religion.”

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Source: BBC

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The Facebook-owned messaging service is planning to eventually start invoicing companies for recently introduced features that help bridge the gap between businesses and consumers, WhatsApp COO Matt Idema told Fox Business.

“We want to put a basic foundation in place to allow people to message businesses and for them to get the responses that they want,” Idema said. “We do intend on charging businesses in the future.”

Unlike Messenger which relies on advertising revenue, WhatsApps monetization model will involve streamlined communication features for fielding customer enquiries and sending out updates to followers. To help users tell apart businesses and individuals, the company is also rolling out dedicated verification badges.

Still, it is worth noting that Idema doesn’t entirely rule out the possibility WhatsApp could one day display ads.

The good thing is that, in order to contact customers, companies will have to receive an approval from the user. A spokesperson for the company has since clarified that the feature will work on opt-in basis.

Companies in Europe, Brazil, India and Indonesia are already running trials with the features, according to reports. One of the first giants to test the new function is KLM Royal Dutch Airlines.

This development adds more credibility to previous reports, suggesting Facebook has been quietly looking into monetizing WhatsApp after it abolished its $0.99 sign-up fee, when it first acquired the messaging service back in 2014.

More details about the paid features will follow in an upcoming blog post, slated to arrive next Tuesday.
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Source: Thenextweb

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