Now that WhatsApp is finally available as a proper app for the Apple Watch, Meta is working on a way to inform users when their account is paired with the accessory. The company is also working on a better chat, attachment, and storage management interface. Here are the details.
Update, 7:11 p.m. ET: A Meta representative reached out to 9to5Mac and provided the following statement:
“We are grateful to the University of Vienna researchers for their responsible partnership and diligence under our Bug Bounty program. This collaboration successfully identified a novel enumeration technique that surpassed our intended limits, allowing the researchers to scrape basic publicly available information. We had already been working on industry-leading anti-scraping systems, and this study was instrumental in stress-testing and confirming the immediate efficacy of these new defenses. Importantly, the researchers have securely deleted the data collected as part of the study, and we have found no evidence of malicious actors abusing this vector. As a reminder, user messages remained private and secure thanks to WhatsApp’s default end-to-end encryption, and no non-public data was accessible to the researchers.”
A massive WhatsApp security flaw exposed the phone number of almost every user on the planet – despite the fact that parent company Meta had been alerted to the vulnerability way back in 2017.
Security researchers were able to use what they described as a “simple” exploit to extract a total of 3.5 billion phone numbers from the messaging service …
Users under a higher risk of being targeted by hacking attempts will soon have the option to enable an extra set of security features on WhatsApp. Here are the details.
Starting next year, WhatsApp will finally add support for usernames, rather than relying exclusively on phone numbers. In a new update shared with businesses, Meta has detailed the rollout schedule and technical transition plan.
The rumors were true: WhatsApp for Apple Watch is official. Following last week’s TestFlight leak, Meta today announced the release of a full-featured watchOS version of WhatsApp. Here are the details.
With the update rolling out today, Mac users will have 38 color options to customize their WhatsApp chats, like on the iPhone version. Here’s how it works.
Today was a busy day for WhatsApp users. After confirming passkey support on Android and iOS, the company released a TestFlight build with a long-awaited feature for Apple Watch users. Here are the details.
Your live WhatsApp messages and backups are both protected by end-to-end encryption, but so far you’ve only had the option of using a passkey to access your messages. Accessing backups required a password instead.
That’s all changing now as the company is in the process of rolling out passkey support for backups …
A tactic used by a growing number of scammers is to impersonate help centres in order to trick victims into sharing their screens via WhatsApp. By doing so, they can obtain sensitive information like bank account details and verification codes.
Meta says WhatsApp will now intervene when someone attempts to use screen sharing with an unknown contact during a video call. The company will also proactively flag suspicious-looking chats in Facebook Messenger …
To curb WhatsApp’s growing spam problem, Meta will begin testing a monthly cap for how many messages users can send to people who haven’t replied. Here are the details.
Up until now, WhatsApp accounts have only been tied to users’ phone numbers. That’s about to change, as the app prepares to introduce username support. To get ready for the rollout, WhatsApp is setting up a username reservation system. Here’s how it’ll work.
Today, Meta officially confirmed what some WhatsApp users had already been noticing for the past few days: the app now supports Live Photos. Here’s how it works.
While most U.S. users have never used—or even heard of—WhatsApp Status Updates, Meta recently revealed that the tab is now used by 1.5 billion people per day worldwide. And soon, WhatsApp will take a page from Instagram by adding a Close Friends feature.
A few days ago, Apple fixed a vulnerability on iOS and macOS that “may have been exploited in an extremely sophisticated attack against specific targeted individuals.” Now, new details have emerged, and it appears that the hacking campaign also leveraged a now-fixed WhatsApp flaw to target its victims. Here are the details.
Update, Aug 27: The feature was officially launched today for English-speaking users, according to the official WhatsApp blog. Original post below.
In the latest TestFlight release for its iOS beta testers, WhatsApp rolled out a tool called “Writing Help,” which suggests replies based on the tone set by the user. Here’s how it works.
If you’re like me and often read a message, tell yourself you’ll reply later, and then instantly forget about it, a new WhatsApp experiment might bring the solution.
If you’ve ever tried to get in-app support on WhatsApp, you know the process used to start with filling out a form, possibly attaching a few files, and waiting for a support rep to eventually get in touch.
Now, that form is on its way out, and the screening process is, you guessed it, becoming AI-based. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.