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Tanzania charges man with 'insulting' its leader on WhatsApp
Attempts to clamp down on free speech online aren't just limited to public social network posts. Tanzania has charged five men with insulting President John Magufuli on social networks, one of whom (lecturer Dennis Mtegwa) is accused of offending the country's leader in a WhatsApp discussion group. The other four have also been charged with using Facebook and WhatsApp posts to turn people against the police. All five have denied the charges and are currently free on bail.
WhatsApp adds user mentions so you can't ignore group chats
Anyone who has been included in a group chat knows how annoying they can be. You end up muting the thread to keep the notifications from driving you crazy. Sometimes you do need to see a message and WhatsApp is adding a new tool that will make it a little more difficult to ignore group chats. The app now has user mentions so you can make sure whoever you need to see a message gets a notification about it.
FreedomPop's free unlimited WhatsApp SIM comes to the UK
FreedomPop is famed for its free, barebones mobile plan, and for its next trick, the operator is mixing up the formula a little bit. Following a similar launch in the US, the provider's new WhatsApp SIM has come to the UK, offering 200MB of data, 100 minutes and unlimited WhatsApp messaging each month completely free.
Privacy groups call foul on WhatsApp sharing data with Facebook
WhatsApp's new terms-of-service are causing quite a stir among privacy advocates. Yesterday, the company announced it would begin sharing user phone numbers, profile data, status message and online status with Facebook, its parent company -- a change that the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) claims violates a Federal Trade Commission consent order.
WhatsApp will start sharing your data with Facebook
WhatsApp announced a major change that we suspected was coming today by adding terms that allow it to share user data with its parent company Facebook.
Italian earthquake victims asked to disable WiFi passwords
Early Wednesday a 6.2 magnitude earthquake struck central Italy, killing at least 120 people and trapping countless others under debris. To help ease communications for search and recovery, multiple disaster relief institutions are urging locals to temporarily remove their WiFi passwords.
FreedomPop offers unlimited WhatsApp chats in over 30 countries
Don't want to pay a fortune for mobile service, but can't stand the thought of being unable to message your friends? FreedomPop thinks it can help. The sometimes-free carrier has launched an offer that gives you free, unlimited WhatsApp messaging in over 30 countries, including the US. And yes, that includes when you travel -- it should be that much easier to let the folks back home know how you're doing. In a chat with VentureBeat, the company says that there's "really no reason" you need to pay for voice or text in the modern era. This is just taking a logical step, he argues albeit an odd one when WhatsApp isn't nearly as popular in the US as it is elsewhere.
Brazil freezes Facebook funds over WhatsApp evidence spat
A Brazilian court has frozen 19.5-million reals ($6-million) of Facebook's cash after the social network's messaging service, WhatsApp, failed to hand over data as part of a criminal investigation. Reuters reports that Brazilian law enforcement sought access to messages that could link drug smugglers from a number of recent raids. The court targeted Facebook Inc, as WhatsApp doesn't have any financial operations in the country.
WhatsApp can quote messages you want to respond to
WhatsApp now has the ability to quote messages you want to reply to, which sounds especially useful for group chats with friends or family. Only problem is, it's unclear if everyone already has access to it. It first came out a day ago or so as an experimental feature for the Android app's beta version (v.2.16.118). However, we were able to quote messages on our stable apps (v. 2.16.6) for Android and iOS without having to update either of them. Note that we also didn't see a new update on iTunes or Google Play.
John McAfee claims he can read encrypted messages on Android (updated)
John McAfee is already many things -- entrepreneur, presidential hopeful, alleged criminal. However, you might have to add one more item to that list: the co-discoverer of a potentially major Android security flaw. He and a team in Colorado claim to have found a hole in Google's mobile platform that lets them read encrypted WhatsApp messages (and those from other services, for that matter), rendering its privacy safeguards pointless. McAfee is saying precious little about how the intrusion works, but he supposedly gave Cybersecurity Ventures enough details to suggest that the story might hold up.
WhatsApp has a new desktop app for Windows and OS X
WhatsApp users now have a better way to stay in touch from their PC, as it has released a desktop app for Windows and Mac users. News of the desktop app leaked out early after it was detected by the Twitter account WABetaInfo, which tracks changes in the service's various clients. According to a company blog post, the desktop client is similar to WhatsApp Web in that it's meant to be an extension of your phone, with synchronized conversations and messages. WhatsApp avoided the app stores available on either platform, choosing to make its desktop available for direct downloading, as long as you're running Windows 8 (or newer) or OS X 10.9 (or newer).
Brazilian court reverses yet another WhatsApp ban
Access to WhatsApp has been reinstated in Brazil just 24 hours after Judge Marcel Montalvão ordered the country's five largest cellular service providers to block the messaging service.
Brazilian court blocks WhatsApp for 72 hours
A Brazilian judge has ordered local cellphone carriers to block WhatsApp on their networks for 72 hours, effectively locking out over 100 million users from the Facebook-owned messaging service. The ban, which started Monday afternoon local time, appears to be a result of a dispute over WhatsApp's move to encrypt 100 percent of messages on its service. As TechCrunch reports, Judge Marcel Montalvo ordered WhatsApp to hand over chat records related to a drug investigation, but the company argued that it does not keep such records and could not decrypt the data even if it did. Therefore, it can't deliver something it does not have access to. Update: Whatsapp boss Jan Koum says in a post on Facebook that while it is working to get services back online in Brazil, "we have no intention of compromising the security of our billion users around the world."
Every message in WhatsApp is completely encrypted
Surprise! WhatsApp, one of the most popular online communication services in the world, now uses end-to-end encryption on every device and for every message, whether it's voice, text, photo, video, group or one-on-one. Open Whisper Systems, an organization that aims to advance secure communication technology, worked with WhatsApp over the past year to implement a full-coverage encryption system. Today, WhatsApp users will see notices in their conversation screens as their messages become secure.
Facebook is breaking up with the BlackBerry platform
WhatsApp's earlier announcement that it's leaving the BlackBerry ecosystem was apparently only the beginning of Facebook's exodus from the platform. The world's biggest social network and its Messenger app will stop working on the BlackBerry OS, including BB10, by the end of 2016. In a blog post on the company's website, the app team said Facebook decided to "discontinue support of their essential APIs for BlackBerry." They tried to change their minds, but it sounds like Zuckerberg and his crew wouldn't budge -- the team even started a Twitter campaign in an effort to get Facebook to reconsider.
Whatsapp encrypted voice chat is reportedly coming soon
While much of the tech community has already come out in support of Apple over its ongoing encryption battle with the FBI, you can also expect the conversation to lead to even more secure products. Whatsapp, which has been offering end-to-end encryption for text chats since 2014, plans to encrypt voice chats in the "coming weeks," The Guardian reports. The company might also start marketing its secure capabilities more, something that it's downplayed in the past.
Brazil court orders release of arrested Facebook exec
Did you think Brazil was overreacting when it arrested a Facebook executive over the company's failure to hand over WhatsApp user data? So did a Brazilian court. A judge in Sergipe has ordered the release of Latin America VP Diego Dzodan just a day after he was detained, arguing that it was "unlawful coercion" -- in other words, authorities were trying to bully Facebook into complying. This isn't the first time that Brazil has crossed the line, either, as it previously ordered a temporary ban on WhatsApp that was overturned on appeal.
Brazil detains Facebook VP after he failed to give up user data
Apple isn't the only company in hot water over encryption. Facebook's VP of Latin America, Diego Dzodan, was detained by police this morning in Brazil after the company failed to comply with a court order to hand over Whatsapp user data, CNN reports. The big problem: Whatsapp (which Facebook owns) fully encrypts messages between users, and it has no records of messages sent. Even if it were to get access to a specific device, the encryption is likely too difficult for the company to crack.
WhatsApp is dropping support for the BlackBerry platform
By the end of 2016, WhatsApp will no longer work on most BlackBerry devices, even those loaded with the company's latest mobile platform. In the blog post the WhatsApp team published today, they reminisced about their launch back in 2009, when most smartphones were either a BlackBerry or a Nokia. It was a different time, and the Facebook-owned app's developers have to cut them off, because the platforms "don't offer the kind of capabilities [they] need to expand [their] app's features in the future."
Facebook's WhatsApp messenger hits 1 billion monthly users
Last time WhatsApp crowed about its active monthly user count, it was a zero shy of where it is now: 1 billion. The outfit says that's almost one in seven people on Earth who use Facebook's $19 billion messaging application. The announcement says not to expect much to change with this notable milestone other than forthcoming improvements to speed and security, most notably, while aiming to get the other six billion of our neighbors using the platform. Just think, if the company hadn't dropped its $1 annual subscription fee, that'd be a relatively easy billion dollars a year in income -- and we all know just how cool that much money is.
