WhatsApp Download

What’s happening to WhatsApp, the most popular instant messaging app? For the second time this month, users across the world have been left unable to use the messaging app for unknown reasons yesterday afternoon.

The crash was experienced in many countries around the world, especially in Europe. Disappointed users living in the UK, northern Europe, Italy, Spain, parts of South America, Mexico, New York and San Francisco reported yesterday afternoon serious connection issues and problems sending and receiving messages, uploading conversations and even logging into the app.

Trying to find a solution, thousands of users have immediately reported the problem and have used Twitter to share their issues. According to DownDetector, about 56 percent of complaints were about connection issues, while, according to The Independent, 32 percent of users were having trouble receiving messages.

The DailyMail.com has promptly contacted the Facebook-owned instant messaging app to know more about the outage, but no-one has responded yet, so we still don’t have an explanation on the matter. Fact is that WhatsApp is recently experiencing quite often this kind of mysterious problems, and its many users are literally left in the dark. This is in fact the second blackout this month for WhatsApp, while the first one was on New Year’s Eve.

Despite its growing success, WhatsApp is facing quite a difficult period. Besides the crashes above, the issues related with the data-sharing with Facebook are far from being over, and the battle with many authorities responsible for the privacy of users around the world has just begun.

Just a few days ago Italian’s antitrust authorities have fined WhatsApp 3 Million Euros. And now the European Union antitrust regulators have decided that they would fine Facebook, WhatsApp’s parent company, €110m for providing misleading information. That’s what the Commission said: “The Commission has found that, contrary to Facebook’s statements in the 2014 merger review process, the technical possibility of automatically matching Facebook and WhatsApp users’ identities already existed in 2014, and that Facebook staff were aware of such a possibility,”.

WhatsApp, the most popular instant messaging app in the world, has been under the radar of European privacy authorities soon after its decision to update its privacy policy last year. After several debates, direct attacks and criticism, now WhatsApp has to face a huge fine. What’s happened?

Italian’s antitrust authorities have just fined the Facebook-owned app €3 Million. The decision was taken because, according to the Italian competition watchdog, users were ‘induced’ into sharing information with Facebook, who, as we know, is the app’s parent company. Actually the fine is even lower than expected, the maximum being €5 million.

Even so, it is an important decision which comes after a similar one was taken by German authorities, which banned Facebook from collecting information on its WhatsApp users in the country.

What was the reaction of WhatsApp? A spokesperson of the messaging app said: “We’re reviewing the decision, and we look forward to responding to officials,” . But the €3 Million penalty seems to be not enough to settle the dispute. The Italian regulator has also extended its investigation to other contractual clauses because of “alleged unfair nature of some contractual clauses included in WhatsApp Messenger’s Terms of Use“. These clauses include WhatsApp’s right to switch off the service at any moment and for any reason, but this part of the dispute should be ruled by the law of the State of California.

On the matter the Italian’s antitrust regulator explained that WhatsApp users had the opportunity to refuse to share their data with Facebook, but that `it was inadequately flagged’. It is a fact that all of the 28 European Union data protections authorities have expressed their concern about WhatsApp’s new policy and clearly asked the company to stop sharing its users’ data with its parent company.

When WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook back in 2014, users were told that “Respect for your privacy is coded into our DNA, and we built WhatsApp around the goal of knowing as little as possible.”

WhatsApp has just made a further step ahead to ensure the security of its users. We all remember very well that the Facebook-owned instant messaging app last year added end-to-end encryption to prevent messages being intercepted by hackers and that this decision generated several debates and criticisms.

But probably many users haven’t realized that until now iPhone backed chats were stored in a readable form on Apple’s servers. Well, it appears that WhatsApp has decided to solve this issue. From now on no-one has access to messages that are stored on Apple’s cloud backup without WhatsApp decryption key.

That’s what a WhatsApp spokesperson told Forbes: “When a user backs up their chats through WhatsApp to iCloud, the backup files are sent encrypted,”. We expect that this move will encounter once again governments’ disapproval. For example Amber Rudd, UK government home secretary, who claimed that it is “completely unacceptable” that authorities are not allowed to access to messages stored on mobile applications and protected by end-to-end encryption, adding that in the near future she intends to discuss the situation with technology companies.

In the meantime, WhatsApp has not yet revealed if this further improvement is also available for Android users and, more important, how the iCloud backup encryption works.

Security experts seem quite convinced that WhatsApp itself have the ability to decrypt the files. Elmar Eperiesi-Beck, chief executive at security firm Eperi GmbH, asked WhatsApp to make its software open in order to let users understand how it works and make it possible for experts to test its security.

That’s what he said: “Right now, user data cannot be accessed by iCloud, but still by WhatsApp. Users have to decide for themselves if this solution satisfies them,” and also “WhatsApp currently seems to both generate and backup the key data. This means they have key access and subsequently can access user data. Only the user should be able to generate the access key.”

The issues with iCloud backup emerged after Forbes reported that Oxygen Forensics (a Russian-based company) have found a way to bypass the iCloud encryption. We still don’t have heard any comments coming from WhatsApp about these claims, but the decision to strengthen its encryption is a clear message.

Let’s be honest, it happened at least once even to you in your social media life: you have sent a message by mistake. Sometimes we sent it to the wrong recipient, some others we have written something that later we have regretted, but the result is the same: embarassment.

Luckily, WhatsApp developers are coming to our aid and have finally designed a new “unsend” feature. At least that’s what WABetaInfo reveals on Twitter. According to the site the icon for this new feature is already available in the latest 2.17.171 Beta version for Android devices, but is currently disabled by default.

According to WABetaInfo, before opting for the name “recall”, the new feature was tested under several names such as “unsend” and “revoke”. Good news also for iOS users of WhatsApp, since, always according to WABetaInfo, the “recall” option will soon be added on the next beta update for iOS devices.

Thanks to this latest feature, WhatsApp users will now be able to recall/unsend a message that they have sent to another contact, and you know very well that until now you were (unfortunately) not allowed to do such a thing. So, another step forward for the Facebook-owned app, which is the most popular instant messaging app around the world.

A very similar feature is already available on Instagram, which is also owned by Facebook. But remember that this new feature has been added just in this latest 2.17.171 Beta version of the app, and, as we said, it is currently disabled by default, and we don’t know yet when and if this new feature will be added in a stable version of the app. In the meantime enjoy all the new features that have recently been added to the app.

Out of curiosity, that’s one of the latest statistic about the app: Whatsapp users make over 55 million video calls per day across the world on Android, iOS and Windows devices. India owns the record, with over 50 million video calling minutes per day.

If you are using WhatsApp through Windows Phone devices, well, you better pay attention before installing the latest 2.17.240 update, as it reportedly contains a major bug that prevents users from receiving media messages.

What is happening to our favourite instant messaging app? According to the latest online reports, it would be better to avoid to install this latest 2.17.240 version of the app for Windows Phone devices. That is what a beta tester had warned on Twitter, talking about this latest 2.17.240 version of WhatsApp for Windows Phone devices.

According to the WABetaInfo user, not only this huge bug does not let users receive any kind of media messages, but it also creates big problems with text messages. “Don’t update,” was the clear warning of the beta tester, which was followed by another even more alarming message “Seems there are issues also for text messages.”

Of course beta testers are well  aware that beta versions are not exactly safe, and that new features may create some problems. At least until they are not yet added in stable versions. So if you don’t have time to waste, it is safer not to download this latest update. But on the other side, if you are still eager to have your device updated with all the latest new features, you can download this 2.17.20 version of WhatsApp from the Windows Store and the Google Play Store.

Despite the issues brought by this latest version, recently the popular Facebook-owned app has rolled out several new features for the joy of its many user. Features such as more than 100 new emoji. Not to mention the new important option available for iOS users that lets Siri read out users messages.

A major update is available for iOS users of WhatsApp. Thanks to this latest 2.17.2 version of the app, anyone running iOS 10.3 will be finally able to ask Siri to read out loud their latest unread messages.

Furthermore, this great new feature is not the only improvement added to the iOS platform of the app. The latest update adds also the ability to select multiple statuses to forward or revoke from the My Updates screen. Also the old Voice Call icon has changed, and has been replaced with a “+” icon. This new icon, once tapped, shows a list of contacts for placing both voice and video calls.

iOS users probably already know that the support for Siri was added in September, and since then it allows them to send messages and answer WhatsApp calls using simply voice commands from the lock screen. To use Siri with WhatsApp on your iOS device you just have to enable App Support going to the Siri setting menu.

But this latest 2.17.2 version of WhatsApp for iOS devices also comes with some nice visual tweaks.The Group Info, Contacts Info and the Calls tab get a makeover, and now their icons are more colorful. Furthermore, they will feature images that gets enlarged once you scroll down. It’s also interesting to note that the support for the Persian language has been added to the service along with an easier two-step verification interface.

Here’s how the popular Facebook-owned company introduces these latest additions to iOS users on the website:

• You can now ask Siri to read your latest messages (iOS 10.3+)
• Visual improvements to the Calls tab, Contact Info and Group Info screens
• In the My Updates screen, you can now select multiple statuses at once and forward or delete them
• Support for Persian

You can already install this latest 2.17.2 version of WhatsApp for iOS devices straight from the Apple Store.

Great news for WhatsApp users. According to @WABetainfo Twitter account, the popular instant messaging app may add two new features on both its Android and Windows Phone versions: Change Number and Live Location.

If @WABetainfo is correct as usual, the new Change Number option has already been added to the new 2.17.130 Beta version of WhatsApp for Windows Phone and Windows 10 Mobile users and it seems obvious that this new feature will soon be available also for Android devices. Why is this feature so important? Because it will make it much, much easier to change your mobile phone number, and without losing your previous chats or group data.

The feature also allows you to notify all, none or just any of your WhatsApp contacts about your number change. Furthermore, according to @WABetainfo, the Change Number feature will be disabled by default.

So far, that’s what WhatsApp has told its users on its website: “When you change your WhatsApp phone number, your contacts will not individually be informed of the change. Only participants that share group chats with you will see that you changed your number. For a seamless messaging experience, notify your contacts that your number will be changing before you begin this process.” So, needless to say, the addition of the Change Number feature is a huge improvement, and we expect that it will make the Facebook-owned instant messaging app even more popular.

Always according to @WABetainfo, it appears that the Live Location sharing feature has already been added to the latest 2.17.150 WhatsApp beta version for Android devices, and that it is disabled by default. How does this new feature work? Unfortunately, so far we are not able to give you more details about it, but it probably will be similar to the sharing your location feature just added to Google Maps.