He also said that the app would not display any third-party ads, and that it would have new features such as the ability to communicate with businesses. In April 2015, Forbes predicted that between 2012 and 2018, the telecommunications industry would lose $386 billion because of “over-the-top” services like WhatsApp and Skype. This would give them some context for why they are important, and that will lead them to pay for more services like this – or so the hope goes. These could be a social networking service like Facebook, a messaging service, maybe search and other things like weather.
User statistics
In March 2024, Meta announced that WhatsApp would let third-party messaging services enable interoperability with WhatsApp, a requirement of the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). This led many users to delete WhatsApp and instead use services such as Signal and Telegram. In December 2019, WhatsApp announced that a new update would lock out any Apple users who had not updated to iOS 9 or higher and Samsung, Huawei, Sony and Google users who had not updated to version 4.0 by February 1, 2020. In August 2014, WhatsApp was the most popular messaging app in the world, with more than 600 million users. In May 2014, WhatsApp crossed 50 million monthly active users in India, which is also its largest country by the number of monthly active users, then 70 million in October 2014, making users in India 10% of WhatsApp’s total user base.
- A month earlier, after Koum purchased an iPhone, he and Acton decided to create an app for the App Store.
- However, the company did not reveal the names of the end users, which according to research by Citizen Lab include, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Mexico and the United Arab Emirates.
- The app collected data on who the users contacted and how often, and when and how they were using the app.
- On May 9, 2014, the government of Iran announced that it had proposed to block the access to WhatsApp service to Iranian residents.
India
The new privacy policy would not apply within the EU, as it is illegal under the GDPR. On December 16, 2020, a claim that WhatsApp gave Google access to private messages was included in the anti-trust case against the latter. In its revelation via documents received from court, the group claimed that the lawsuit brought against the company by WhatsApp threatened to infringe on its clients’ “national security and foreign policy concerns”. For security purposes, since February 1, 2020, WhatsApp has been made unavailable on smartphones using legacy operating systems like Android 2.3.7 or older and iPhone iOS 8 or older that are no longer updated by their providers. The bug was discovered by Check Point in August 2019 and reported to WhatsApp.
Voice calls between two accounts were added to the app in March and April 2015. Edited messages were tagged as “edited” to inform recipients that the content had been modified. In October 2018, the “Swipe to Reply” option was added to the Android beta version, 16 months after it was introduced for iOS.
Mods and fake versions
In April 2017, the perpetrator of the Stockholm truck attack reportedly used WhatsApp to exchange messages with an ISIS supporter shortly before and after the incident. Rudd publicly called for police and intelligence agencies to be given access to WhatsApp and other encrypted messaging services to prevent future terror attacks. However, the company did not https://chickenroadapp.in/ reveal the names of the end users, which according to research by Citizen Lab include, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Mexico and the United Arab Emirates.
Unlike other platforms, WhatsApp requires third-party apps to add Stickers to WhatsApp. Since then, linked devices support has expanded and more information is written in the Platform Support part of this article. In November 2023, WhatsApp also began rolling out support for sending login codes to a linked email address, rather than via SMS. This was implemented only on Samsung phones, with plans to expand to Android and iOS “soon”.
- The ban was prompted by concerns of US authorities potentially accessing user data for such apps because of the CLOUD Act.
- This led many users to delete WhatsApp and instead use services such as Signal and Telegram.
- In November 2023, WhatsApp added a “voice chat” feature for groups with more than 32 members.
- Unlike other platforms, WhatsApp requires third-party apps to add Stickers to WhatsApp.
- In August 2014, WhatsApp was the most popular messaging app in the world, with more than 600 million users.
This “Facebook coin” would reportedly be a stablecoin pegged to the value of a basket of different foreign currencies. The project reportedly involved more than 50 engineers under the direction of former PayPal president David A. Marcus. On February 28, 2019, The New York Times reported that Facebook was “hoping to succeed where Bitcoin failed” by developing an in-house cryptocurrency that would be incorporated into WhatsApp. The service became generally available in India and Brazil, and in Singapore for WhatsApp Business transactions only.
Features
Further, the Cabinet Office had claimed that since many messages were not relevant to the inquiry, it only needed to hand over material it had selected as being relevant. A personal device of the former Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, had been compromised by a security breach, and it was claimed that it could not be switched on to recover messages. The researchers notified, Meta (who updated the enumeration problem in October), and deleted their copy of the phone numbers. On November 29, 2021, an FBI document was uncovered by Rolling Stone, revealing that WhatsApp responds to warrants and subpoenas from law enforcement within minutes, providing user metadata to the authorities.
In October 2024, WhatsApp expanded their chat filter feature, adding the ability for users to create custom lists that contain specific chats of their choice. In October 2020, WhatsApp rolled out a feature allowing users to mute both individuals and group chats forever. Local users can text special numbers in the app to launch an in-app shopping process, where they can order groceries. In May 2022, WhatsApp launched its Cloud API services (now known as WhatsApp Business Platform) for larger businesses requiring features beyond the WhatsApp Business App. Facing criticism, WhatsApp postponed the update to May 15, 2021, and had no plans to limit functionality of users, nor nag users who did not approve the new terms.
Voice and video calling and notes
In the same month, WhatsApp began testing a feature to help users find out more information and context about information they receive to help combat misinformation. WhatsApp was announced to be the 3rd most downloaded mobile phone app of the decade 2010–2019. The company also reported that Windows Phone operating systems would no longer be supported after December 31, 2019. On January 18, 2016, WhatsApp’s co-founder Jan Koum announced that it would no longer charge users a $1 annual subscription fee, in an effort to remove a barrier faced by users without payment cards.
By February 2017, WhatsApp had over 1.2 billion users globally, reaching 1.5 billion monthly active users by the end of 2017. At that point WhatsApp was adding about 25 million new users every month, or 833,000 active users per day. In October 2020, Facebook announced the introduction of pricing tiers for services offered via the WhatsApp Business API, charged on a per-conversation basis. The organization reported a massive drop-off in traffic for the blocked services, though the country’s government made no official statements about the block. In December 2021, the Swiss army banned the use of WhatsApp and several other non-Swiss encrypted messaging services by army personnel.
Third-party clients
WhatsApp officially rolled out the Companion mode for Android users, allowing linking up to five Android phones to a single account. In April 2023, the app rolled out a feature that would allow account access across multiple phones, in a shift that would make it more like competitors. In January 2015, WhatsApp launched a web client that allowed users to scan a QR code with their mobile app, mirroring their chats to their browser. In July 2021, WhatsApp announced forthcoming support for end-to-end encryption for backups stored in Facebook’s cloud.
An integer overflow bug allowed a malicious user to take full control of the victim’s application once a video call between two WhatsApp users was established. There were a series of incidents between 2017 and 2020, after which WhatsApp announced changes for Indian users of the platform that labels forwarded messages as such. On April 5, 2016, WhatsApp and Open Whisper Systems announced that they had finished adding end-to-end encryption to “every form of communication” on WhatsApp, and that users could now verify each other’s keys. In November 2017, WhatsApp implemented a feature giving users seven minutes to delete messages sent by mistake.
Engadget called the revamped feature “WhatsApp’s version of an AIM away message” and likened it to Instagram’s and Facebook’s Notes. Prior to the update, the feature was “largely hidden within the apps menus” and difficult to find, with the reason for updating being that WhatsApp wanted the feature to be used more often. According to WhatsApp, this update was made for the incoming Christmas period for users to inform their contacts on their activities during the holidays. WhatsApp also introduced chat filters, allowing users to sort their chats by All, Unread or Groups. In April 2024, an AI-powered “Smart Assistant” became widely available in WhatsApp, allowing users to ask it questions or have it complete tasks such as generating images.
Sequoia Capital received an approximate 5,000% return on its initial investment. At the time, it was the largest acquisition of a venture-capital-backed company in history. On February 19, 2014, one year after the venture capital financing round at a $1.5 billion valuation, Facebook, Inc. (now Meta Platforms) agreed to acquire the company for US$19 billion, its largest acquisition to date. That year, the company had $148 million in expenses and a net loss of $138 million.
This allows users to send messages between other messaging apps and WhatsApp while maintaining end-to-end encryption. In May 2017, it was reported that WhatsApp users spend over 340 million minutes on video calls each day on the app. In May 2016, some WhatsApp users were reported to have been tricked into downloading a third-party application called WhatsApp Gold, which was part of a scam that infected the users’ phones with malware. Since the complete roll out of this feature, users cannot check old messages before this period on the Web version anymore.
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