Category Archives: NEWS

The latest Beta version of WhatsApp for Android devices comes with an interesting addition. What changes? By installing this latest update, Android users will be able to use many more emojis because WhatsApp has added support for the new Unicode 9.0. Furthermore, what’s really great of this new enhancement is that WhatsApp has decided to extend it to all of its Android users, it doesn’t matter what version of the platform you are using.

That said, let’s see what has been added with this latest 2.17.44 Beta version of WhatsApp for Android devices. There is a complete new set of emojis which includes different objects and emoticons. For example, from now on you will have a father with two kids emoji, or a rainblow flag, facepalm, a pregnant woman, mother and son, a shrug, a butterfly, a weight lifter, a swimmer and a surfer. Other funny emojis have been added such as ROFL (rolling on the floor laughing), drooling face and lying face, along with new profession emojis and much more.

As we said above, for the moment this update is available only in Beta, so if you want to install this latest 2.17.44 Beta version of WhatsApp you need to be part of the Beta Testing Program. It’s really easy to join the program and become a Beta Tester, you simply have to go to the Google Play Store and open WhatsApp Messenger app.

Once you have opened it you simply have to click on the ‘Become a beta tester’ button. Joining the program will allow you to download the new WhatsApp beta in a few minutes and enjoy it before it is released as a stable version.

WhatsApp is undoubtedly one of the most successful instant messaging app in the world (more than one billion monthly active users), and recently has added many other new features along with the full support for Android Nougat notifications which shows all unread messages from a single conversation, not just the latest message like it happened earlier.

Would you like to be able to know where your friends are in no time? Well, WhatsApp, the famous Facebook-owned instant messaging app, is currently testing a new tool which will allow you to track your friends’ location more easily.

This new feature, called Live Location Tracking, has just been spotted in the new beta version of the app, and it appears to work on both Android and iOS platforms. Let’s be honest, if you have an appointment with some of your contacts, it’s very useful to be able to see where they are, and thanks to this latest update users will be able to make their current location visible to their friends.

How does it work? This latest function is a real no-brainer and, most of all, you will be able to set it just for a limited period of time and then to disable it. Let’s see then how it works. You can enable the Live Location Tracking feature simply going to the Settings menu. From here you will be able to set it for just a limited period of time. So, let’s say, you can decide to enable it for one-two or five minutes and then it will be disabled by default.

As you can see, this upgrade is a further improvement of the app that already allowed users to share a specific location with their friends. As we said above, for now this new feature is only available in beta versions and we don’t know yet when it will be available to all users.

During the last few months WhatsApp developers are working harder than ever to add new features to the app in order to win the battle with the competition, and, for the moment, statistics put WhatsApp on the top with more than 1 billion active users.

In the meantime the decision to change the privacy policy keeps on creating issues for WhatsApp. Last news report that a German consumer group sued WhatsApp in a Berlin court because of the clauses that allow the app to share users data with Facebook. That’s what consumer association VZBV declared: “Our experts brought the misconduct to light. Now we’ll meet in court,”Be it Facebook, Google, Amazon or now WhatsApp: we target violations.”.

WhatsApp reacted with an e-mailed statement saying that its privacy policy and terms updates are within the law and give users a clear and simple explanation on how the service works.

A really useful option has just been made available for those of you who use WhatsApp with iOS devices. The latest upgrade of the app for iOS devices is a major one, for it allows users to send WhatsApp messages even when they are completely offline.

Needless to say that this is a huge improvement, which surely comes handy while, for example, you travel or if you are in a ‘dead zone’. Now iOS users will always be able to send their messages even without web access, and, more important, without putting them in a queue waiting desperately for the mobile signal. Isn’t it great?

It is easy to use this latest advanced option of WhatsApp (that appears to be already available also to Android users), you simply have to download the latest 2.17.1 version of WhatsApp via the Apple App Store. If the ability to send messages without an internet connection is a great option, this latest 2.17.1 version of WhatsApp for iOS introduces also other interesting new features. Let’s see together what are the other changes that developers have brought with this latest update.

With the installation of this latest 2.17.1 version of WhatsApp for iOS, you will have a new storage usage screen available on your phone. What is it for? Well, thanks to this addition it should be much easier for users to free up space on their iPhone devices. With this newly added screen users will be able to delete only specific messages (including video messages, pictures, voice messages, documents, contacts and locations) from particular conversations. How can you access this new screen? It’s very simple. You just have to go to Settings > Data and Storage Usage > Storage Usage and then tap on Clear Chat.

Along with the new features above, there is one last new option that has been added with this latest 2.17.1 version of WhatsApp for iOS, and it’s another ability that was long awaited by iOS users. Now users are finally allowed to send up to 30 photos or videos at once (until now the limit was just 10).

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.

An important update has been added to WhatsApp: the app will now finally support the Android Nougat new notification system. What does it mean? It means that starting from Beta version 2.17.13 of WhatsApp, Android Nougat users will have access to the full notification system.

So, thanks to this latest upgrade, people who use smartphones running Android 7.0 or 7.1 Nougat will now be able to see all messages from a conversation, it doesn’t matter if personal or group chat, both of them. Furthermore, thanks to this latest update, when you receive a new message from the same conversation the Quick Reply option will not disappear. And that’s not all, since this new update fixes also the notification issues reported on Android Wear devices.

All these improvements are available for those of you who are enrolled to the beta testing program available on Google Play. If you are not yet a Beta Tester but want to join the program, you simply have to sign up by clicking on the ‘Become a Tester’ button. Another way to install this latest beta version of WhatsApp for Android on your device is by downloading it from some safe websites such as APK Mirror, which allow access to apps signed by Google. Alternatively, you can wait until this latest update will be added to a stable version of the app.

Even if WhatsApp is currently one of the most successful instant messaging app of the world (more that 1 billion monthly active users), the Facebook-owned app has even bigger plans for its future. According to some reports, WhatsApp is preparing to bring structured messages for enterprises/businesses. At least this is what WABetaInfo says with a report on Twitter.

According to WABetaInfo, a new feature has been spotted in WhatsApp’s latest updates on Android, iOS and Windows. With the addition of the new functionality, WhatsApp takes another step to be more business friendly.

This recent update of WhatsApp will certainly make Android users very happy. A new interesting feature has been added to Beta version 2.17.6, allowing WhatsApp users to search for GIFs from within the app thanks to the addition of a built-in GIF search engine. Let’s see what changes.

Before this update, Android users could only send GIFs that were already downloaded on their device. Or, as an alternative, they could use third party apps. But now, thanks to the addition of this new feature, WhatsApp users can easily search for new GIFs. It is possible to use this new feature by simply tapping the emoji button that is located to the left of the text field. After that a menu will pop up with a list of options. Now users will be able to search for a specific keyword and the results will come from GIF platforms such as Giphy and Tenor.

But Beta version 2.17.6 of WhatsApp for Android has another surprise for the joy of its users, since another useful option has been added. Users have now the ability to send up to 30 photos in a single message (so far the limit was just 10). Isn’t it great? Quite oddly, these new features for the moment are not available with the latest 2.17.8 beta version, but we expect that they will be added soon to a stable one. In the mean time you can download the APK from some safe sites such as APK Mirror.

Despite the growing success (now WhatsApp has more than one billion active users all over the world), the life of this Facebook-owned instant messaging app is far from being easy. Always under the spotlights and criticized by competitors and governments, now the app must face new allegations of a security flaw which allows governments and hackers to access users’ texts.

Obviously Facebook claims that the flaw, found by Tobias Boelter (a cryptography and security researcher at the University of California, Berkley), doesn’t exist and that no one can intercept WhatsApp messages, but reports have claimed the contrary. Boelter told The Guardian that ‘If WhatsApp is asked by a government agency to disclose its messaging records, it can effectively grant access due to the change in keys‘. How can it happen?

As we know, thanks to the ‘end-to-end’ encryption, messages are visible only to the person who has sent them and to the contacts who receive them. This happens by using a ‘lock’, which is paired with a ‘key’ that just senders and recipients have. Well, according to these recent allegations, WhatsApp has the ability to force these keys and re-encrypt messages, without the contacts being aware.

And that’s not all. According to The Guardian, Tobias Boelter reported this flaw to Facebook in April 2016. At the time Facebook replied that they were aware of the problem, but nothing was done. Let’s see in the next few weeks what will be the reaction of WhatsApp.