Great news on the horizon for WhatsAppers who use Windows Phone devices, for new interesting features will soon be added to the app. The first new option that Windows Phone users will be enabled to use thanks to this latest update is the ability to forward statuses.
Furthermore, this latest 2.17.20 Beta version of WhatsApp for Windows Phone devices adds another important and handy feature. So, let’s see what it is. You already have a Vcard of a contact? Thanks to this latest update, the app will let you know if the same contact sends you further messages. How? Through a popup window which will ask you whether or not you wish to save it in your contacts.
Needless to say, this option will make it easier to keep track of your numerous contacts and will also make you save precious time. Unfortunately, the Windows Phone platform is not updated by WhatsApp developers as often as Android or iOS, but nonetheless it is still regularly receiving updates and bug fixes, and we are confident that much more will come during the year that has just begun.
On this blog we have often reported news of scams and viruses that have been spread through WhatsApp. And unfortunately, being WhatsApp one of the most successful instant messaging apps, makes it an easy target to hackers who constantly develop new tricks in order to fraud users.
For example, one of the most recent scams in the UK offers a link to get a free £250 gift card for Sainsbury’s or M&S (two of the most important supermarket in the UK). When you click on the link you’ll open a survey page that asks you several personal questions. Obviously this survey is set to steal your data, so, make sure that you don’t fill in the survey and, of course, that you don’t forward the message to your contacts.
Other recent scams work by inviting users to open legitimate-looking PDF, Word or Excel documents attached to a WhatsApp message. By opening the message you will actually download malware which will steal your personal information.
But the latest WhatsApp hoax is the following: “tomorrow at 6 pm they are ending WhatsApp and you have to pay to open it, this is by law. This message is to inform all of our users, our servers have recently been very congested, so we are asking you to help us solve this problem. We require our active users to forward this message to each of the people in your contact list to confirm our active users using WhatsApp, if you do not send this message to all your contacts WhatsApp will then start to charge you. Your account will remain inactive with the consequence of losing all your contacts. Message from Jim Balsamic (CEO of Whatsapp ) we have had an over usage of user names on whatsapp Messenger. We are requesting all users to forward this message to their entire contact list. If you do not forward this message, we will take it as your account is invalid and it will be deleted within the next 48 hours. Please DO NOT ignore this message or whatsapp will no longer recognise your activation. If you wish to re-activate your account after it has been deleted, a charge of 25.00 will be added to your monthly bill. We are also aware of the issue involving the pictures updates not showing. We are working diligently at fixing this problem and it will be up and running as soon as possible. Thank you for your cooperation from the Whatsapp team … WhatsApp is going to cost us money soon. The only way that it will stay free is if you are a frequent user i.e. you have at least 10 people you are chatting with. To become a frequent user send this message to 10 people who receive it (2 ticks) and your WhatsApp logo should turn blue“.
Obviously, this is not true, so please don’t believe it. The list of scams, viruses and hoaxes is still long, and we will see more in the future. So, always pay attention before opening a message.