According to the Financial Times, WhatsApp «has done to SMS on mobile phones what Skype did to international calling on landlines». The messages involved discussing how to make an explosive device and a confession to the attack. In September 2019, WhatsApp was criticized for its implementation of a ‘delete for everyone’ feature. When a user deletes media for everyone, WhatsApp does not delete images saved in the iOS camera roll and so those users are able to keep the images.

Older versions

In December 2023, WhatsApp’s «View Once» feature expanded to include voice messages. In August 2022, WhatsApp launched an integration with JioMart, available only to users in India. In April 2018, WhatsApp co-founder and CEO Jan Koum announced he would be leaving the company. To start using WhatsApp Desktop, you first must log in with your WhatsApp user account. All you have to do is use the WhatsApp app on your smartphone and scan the QR code on the PC screen.
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• On October 14, 2021, WhatsApp rolled out end-to-end encryption for backups on Android and iOS.

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• A Wired report noted the attack was able to inject malware via calls to the targeted phone, even if the user did not answer the call.

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• In January 2021, WhatsApp announced a controversial new privacy policy allowing WhatsApp to share data with its parent company, Facebook.
• They link to and sync with WhatsApp actively running on a supported primary phone.

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• In February 2017, WhatsApp reached 200 million monthly active users in India.

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• In September 2019, WhatsApp was criticized for its implementation of a ‘delete for everyone’ feature.

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Mods and fake versions

• It allows users to send text messages, voice messages, and video messages, make voice and video calls, and share images, documents, user locations, and other content.

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• In November 2023, WhatsApp added a «voice chat» feature for groups with more than 32 members.

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• On May 9, 2014, the government of Iran announced that it had proposed to block the access to WhatsApp service to Iranian residents.

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• In July 2025, WhatsApp stopped developing the Windows UWP-based app due to poor support and deprecation of the UWP framework by Microsoft.

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• In September 2017, WhatsApp’s co-founder Brian Acton left the company to start a nonprofit group, later revealed as the Signal Foundation, which developed the WhatsApp competitor Signal.

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• The organization reported a massive drop-off in traffic for the blocked services, though the country’s government made no official statements about the block.

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Koum then hired a friend in Los Angeles, Chris Peiffer, to develop a BlackBerry version, which arrived two months later. However, when early versions of WhatsApp kept crashing, Koum considered giving up and looking for a new job. A month earlier, after Koum purchased an iPhone, he and Acton decided to create an app for the App Store. The idea started off as an app that would display statuses in a phone’s Contacts menu, showing if a person was at work or on a call.

India

In 2016, WhatsApp was widely praised for the addition of end-to-end encryption and earned a 6 out of 7 points on the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s «Secure Messaging Scorecard». WhatsApp Payments (marketed as WhatsApp Pay) is a peer-to-peer money transfer feature. WhatsApp has been officially supported for iPads and its iPadOS since May 27, 2025. In July 2025, WhatsApp stopped developing the Windows UWP-based app due to poor support and deprecation of the UWP framework by Microsoft. In 2023, WhatsApp replaced the Electron-based apps with native versions for their respective platforms.

Security and privacy

• This allows users to send messages between other messaging apps and WhatsApp while maintaining end-to-end encryption.

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• When a user deletes media for everyone, WhatsApp does not delete images saved in the iOS camera roll and so those users are able to keep the images.

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• In August 2022, WhatsApp launched an integration with JioMart, available only to users in India.

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• Visual effects also became available, adding visual filters to a user’s video feed.
• This ability (named multi-device support) began testing in July 2021 and rolled out to all users in April 2023.

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• In 2022, WhatsApp added the ability for users to turn off their online status.

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Unlike messages in groups or private chats, channels are not end-to-end encrypted. In October 2023 they also introduced passkey support, where a user can verify their login with on-device biometrics, rather than SMS. In November 2023, WhatsApp also began rolling out support for sending login codes to a linked email address, rather than via SMS. Voice calls between two accounts were added to the app in March and April 2015. In September 2017, WhatsApp’s co-founder Brian Acton left the company to start a nonprofit group, later revealed as the Signal Foundation, which developed the WhatsApp competitor Signal.

About this app

The app collected data on who the users contacted and how often, and when and how they were using the app. In January 2021, WhatsApp announced an Lucky Friends casino updated privacy policy which stated that WhatsApp would share user data with Facebook and its «family of companies» beginning February 2021. Previously, users could opt-out of such data sharing, but the new policy removed this option. The new privacy policy would not apply within the EU, as it is illegal under the GDPR. There were a series of incidents between 2017 and 2020, after which WhatsApp announced changes for Indian users of the platform that labels forwarded messages as such. In February 2015, WhatsApp implemented voice calling, which helped WhatsApp to attract a different segment of the user population.
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App Functionality

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A message that promises to allow access to their WhatsApp friends’ conversations, or their contact lists, has become the most popular hit against anyone who uses the application in Brazil. Rudd publicly called for police and intelligence agencies to be given access to WhatsApp and other encrypted messaging services to prevent future terror attacks. In September 2022, a critical security issue in WhatsApp’s Android video call feature was reported. The desktop version was first only available to Android, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone users. Similar to voice messages, this feature allows users to record and send short videos directly in a chat.