Author Archives: Christine

Good news for all those people who access WhatsApp via their PC (more than 200 million!). The web client of the popular instant messaging service, WhatsApp Web, which works with both iOS and Android devices, has introduced some interesting updates.

One of these, perhaps the most useful, allows you to receive notifications on your desktop. How? Thanks to the Chrome notification system and a free extension. How can you use this function? The procedure is quite simple and quick, really a piece of cake. As soon as you synchronize WhatsApp chats on the web, you will be asked if you want to enable desktop notifications using Chrome features. Easy, isn’t it?

And if you change your mind and don’t want to receive desktop notifications anymore? Fortunately WhatsApp Web developers have considered also this option. In fact you can change this setting at any time, or even disable it just temporarily. All you have to do is to open the app and go to Menu>Notifications. And that’s not all, other useful features are now available.

Thanks to WAToolkit (a free extension) you have the possibility to enlarge the text frame of your chat on WhatsApp Web. In addition, it will also be possible to activate notifications in the background so as to receive alerts even when WhatsApp and Chrome are not running. At this point, once you have installed WAToolkit, you will have a new icon on your browser’s toolbar, and, when you click on it, it  will display your new messages. You will find a new icon also on WhatsApp Web, which will allow you to change the extension options.

So, even after the recent security problems (luckily solved), WhatsApp Web is still “alive and kicking” and ready more than ever to face the fierce competition of the other instant messaging services.

A new, free tool is arrived for WhatsApp users. It is called StealthApp, and it works on Android devices. But what is exactly StealthApp? It is a new tool essentially created to help you manage WhatsApp notifications (and we all know how difficult and time-consuming this can be). In addition it actually also helps protecting your privacy.

In fact through StealthApp you can read your messages without sending the famous (and sometimes annoying) double blue check marks. Are you curious to know how can it happen? Very, very simple: using StealthApp you can access to your messages without opening the official WhatsApp app. Once you have installed StealthApp, you will find inside it all the conversations that took place from the time of its installation.

So this seems to be a very nice instant messaging service, which we think will be greatly appreciated by a lot of people concerned about their privacy. In fact with StealthApp you will be practically invisible. No more check mark and no more “last seen”.

But … as always, nothing is perfect, and StealthApp is no exception. There is in fact a little flaw in this otherwise useful app. The problem emerges when you need to access multimedia contents. In fact, If you want to access your voice messages, photos or videos, you can only do that using WhatsApp (the real one). Furthermore, StealthApp is still in a rather experimental stage, and so at the moment the app could create some problems to manage notifications.

But don’t worry, you are not going to waste your money. In fact, for this reason, the developer (clearly a honest one) has released a free version of this very interesting and original application, enabling who wants to use StealthApp to try it before purchasing (furthermore, the cost on the Play Store is absolutely reasonable: only 0,99 Euro).

Once again WhatsApp users risk to see their favourite instant messaging app banned in the UK. But why? Because it seems that encrypted services like iMessage and WhatsApp could be used by terrorists. That’s what Mr Andrew Parker (MI5 boss) believes, and therefore for this reason he strongly recommends to stop those services.

It seems that the UK is a terrorist target, and that the danger of attacks is the highest in 30 years. That’s what Mr Parker stated in an interview with BBC: “Encryption is creating a situation where law enforcement agencies and security agencies can no longer obtain under proper legal warrant the contents of communications between people they have reason to believe are terrorists. They are using secure apps and internet communication to try to broadcast their message and incite and direct terrorism amongst people who live here who are prepared to listen to their message.”

But Mr Parker is not the only one feeling this way. It seems he has an ally in David Cameron, who shares the same convinction and says that encrypted messaging could be easily used with threatening intentions. So, will we assist to the stop of WhatsApp and iMessage in the UK? It’s hard to say. Obviously, for now tech companies are reluctant to cooperate with the UK government and it seems that  they are not completely wrong. In fact, according to experts, removing encryption could further weaken users’ security, easing the access to users messages to terrorists.

So, what will happen now? There is a good chance that a new controversial law called “Snoopers charter” will be applied. If applied, internet service providers and mobile phone companies should keep records of each user’s internet browsing and social media activity, voice calls, email correspondence and mobile phone messaging services, and should store the records for one year. If companies such as WhatsApp and iMessage decide not to follow the new rules, they may be banned in the UK.

WhatsApp developers keep on working on the backup system (which is not exactly a strong point of the app) and now, with the latest beta 2.12.285 for Android smartphones, some new features have been introduced regarding the backup of the videos.

Along with some usual bug fixes and improvements, this new beta introduces the option to exclude videos from the backup, even on Google Drive. Obviously the objective of this new function is to save memory and band, giving the opportunity to create space. This feature may be particularly useful for backup cloud, since the videos often have a size greater than that of other media shared on WhatsApp. Unfortunately even this latest update has not yet introduced the ability to set the time of automatic backup, and many users are  looking forward to this important option.

If you wish to download the last beta of WhatsApp, you can find it as usual on the official website of WhatsApp. Being a beta, you can’t find it on the Google Play Store, where it will arrive once the stable version will be released, so you have to install it manually on your device. The most noticeable changes of  this new beta are in its APK, where 339 files were modified. In addition there are also 6 new files distributed among 4 distinct directories.

Again, WhatsApp decided to add a substantial improvement first on Android devices which support this popular instant messaging app. And it doesn’t surprise us, considering the successful cooperation between Android (which is the mobile operating system more used in the world) and WhatsApp. If you give a look to recent statistics, you’ll discover that 73% of WhatsApp users access the app through Android.

With its 900 million active monthly users, and 64 billion messages sent every day, WhatsApp is certainly making a difference in the world of instant messaging, and we believe that WhatsApp still has many surprises in store for its users.

New updates are available for those who use WhatsApp with Windows Phone and (in a few weeks) with Windows 10 Mobile devices. It has in fact just been released the new beta version 2.12.128 that introduces several new features. The first change allows users to select and change their status. The status list will be expanded by the user that can now quickly enter new status, which will be added to the list.

In addition the new beta brings a new option called Select Messages which is located in the top bar. Another improvement concerns ringtones, with the introduction of new sounds. The new tones are available for messages received when the app is running, and the user can decide to activate or disable them.

Furthermore, it seems that developers have also solved the emoticons issue, which, after the update, should finally be displayed correctly. Talking about emoticons, you can now find also on Windows Phone devices the popular (and controversial) “middle finger” emoticon. Also, as it often happens with beta versions, version 2.12.128 fixes some bugs. As usual, this new beta version is currently available only for beta testers, but, we hope, should reach the store quite soon.

But WhatsApp is quickly growing, so has to look forward. That’s why today there are good news also for those eager to use WhatsAp on Windows 10 Mobile. In fact WhatsApp team should soon release a major updated version of the popular app specifically designed for Windows 10 Mobile. The new Windows OS should be launched in October, together with other devices which will help to use the platform in the best possible way.

Close to the threshold of one billion users (a few days ago was given the announcement that the milestone of 900 million monthly users has been achieved), WhatsApp does not sit on its laurels, and despite some setbacks keeps trying to provide its users the best possible service.

WhatsApp Web, the browser version of the popular instant messaging app, have just lived very critical hours due to a flaw in its security system. The bug has put at risk the data of WhatsApp Web 200 million users, but luckily the problem has already been solved. Unfortunately, it is possible that in the meantime some of the users of the app have been affected by a cyberattack.

Now we really have to thank Kasif Dekel, researcher at Check Point laboratories, who, after some test, discovered the dangerous bug. But which was the trick? Dekel found out that it was simple but equally treacherous . All you needed to hack a device which was using WhatsApp Web was a vCard . The procedure was this. After founding out the telephone number of a potential victim, the hacker sent him a vCard, which the victim opened without thinking too much.

Opening the vCard a malicious code was initiated. The code contained very dangerous tools like RATs (remote access tools, which enable hackers to remotely access a device), bots and ransomware (which makes users pay money to have access again to their own data). But how could this happen? WhatsApp did not control the size of a vCard file, so the application did not notice that inside it there was an executable code and downloaded it.

The discovery was publicly announced on the 8th of September, but WhatsApp was already working to fix the bug since August. In fact, fortunately, Check Point reported immediately to WhatsApp Security Team this flaw on the 21th of August (WhatsApp Web was available from the 19th of August), and by the 27th of August it was fixed.

Oded Vanonu, Security Research Group Manager at Check Point, posted this message: “Thankfully, WhatsApp responded quickly and responsibly to deploy an initial mitigation against exploitation of this issue in all web clients, pending an update of the WhatsApp client“.