Following a major outage that brought down Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp for nearly six hours on Monday, the social media giant's flagship services are lurching back to life.
Facebook and its various services — including Instagram and WhatsApp — are currently experiencing a widespread outage that is seemingly being caused by DNS problems.
The Facebook-owned WhatsApp regularly boasts of using end-to-end encryption and keeping communications between users private, but a report alleges that some monitoring of messages does take place, and that Mark Zuckerberg may not have told the truth to the U.S. Senate.
Ireland has issued its highest ever fine for breaches of GDPR privacy regulations — and Europe's second highest — to Facebook-owned WhatsApp.
WhatsApp is working on adding multi-device support, with a beta of the messaging app revealing it will finally work on an iPad, years after the service's launch.
WhatsApp on Wednesday announced an upcoming feature that will allow users to transfer chat histories between iOS to Android, effectively relieving a major pain point for users attempting to switch platforms.
WhatsApp chief Will Cathcart on Friday dinged Apple's plan to roll out new Child Safety features that scan user photos to find offending images, the latest in a string of criticism from tech experts who suggest the system flouts user privacy.
WhatsApp chief Will Cathcart has problems with the NSO Group taking no responsibility for surveillance and hacking of journalist and activist iPhones and other devices.
WhatsApp is testing ways to make it easier for banned accounts to ask for a review on iOS, at the same time as making changes to calls so that a user can easily join a group call.
WhatsApp is no longer going to limit the accounts of users who do not accept the updated privacy policy, with the Facebook-owned iOS app now saying it wont be harming anyone's usage of the service for the moment.
WhatsApp users who don't agree to the Facebook-owned service's updated privacy policy face the possibility of losing the ability to send or receive messages through the iPhone app.
WhatsApp is attempting to appease users who are considering migrating away from the Facebook-owned service over privacy policy changes, by using its Status feature to remind users it cannot read their encrypted conversations.
WhatsApp Web and WhatsApp Desktop are getting a significant security boost as developers roll out support for biometric authentication when syncing messages.
During a quarterly earnings call on Wednesday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Apple is focused on competitive advantage with iOS 14, not privacy.
The social distancing efforts amid the ongoing pandemic has led to an expected increase in social media usage for New Year's Eve, with Facebook claiming to have observed the most calls made in a single day on WhatsApp.
Facebook-owned WhatsApp has criticized Apple for demanding privacy information that it does not have to disclose for its own apps — but as it turns out, Apple is in fact disclosing this information, the same as it requires from third parties.
WhatsApp is preparing to roll out a new feature to its messaging app called disappearing messages, though while seemingly privacy-focused, it doesn't guarantee that the messages won't exist in some form after it leaves the conversation.
The HomePod may be opened up to third-party music services, and Apple may also allow iOS users to permanently swap the default email and browser apps for alternatives.
This week on the AppleInsider Podcast, the Apple Watch sales now easily exceed those of every single Swiss watch company just as Jony Ive predicted years ago. Plus discussion about Apple's new OS betas, and how one health company is trying to stop Apple's plans over patient records.
A critical security issue has been uncovered in WhatsApp, one that could allow a hacker to read files stored on a user's device if the Facebook-owned messaging app isn't updated with the latest patch.
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AppleInsider Staff
Mike Peterson
Malcolm Owen
William Gallagher
Amber Neely
Victor Marks
