Facebook is restricting WhatsApp users’ ability to forward messages: Each message can now only be sent to a maximum of 20 chats, down from 250, per user. In India, the cap is even lower: only 5 chats. The cap on forwarding comes after at least 20 mob killings, linked to viral child abduction hoaxes spread on the…
After a rough week of criticism over Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s shoddy explanation for why he won’t ban conspiracy site Infowars—including a very awkward tangent into apparently believing Holocaust deniers are not “intentionally getting it wrong”—the social media giant has announced it will begin removing…
Facebook has been under fire in India following a string of lynchings that appeared to have been prompted by false news spread on WhatsApp. It’s become such an epidemic that the Indian government has demanded something be done. For now, Facebook’s solution involves running ads in local newspapers explaining how to…
WhatsApp is promising to introduce new features intended to prevent the spread of hoax messages in India following reports that more than one dozen lynchings have occurred in the country as a result of false rumors spread on the popular, Facebook-owned messaging service.
The FBI just got its hands on a whole lot of Michael Cohen’s encrypted communications. In a letter submitted Friday, the United States Attorney’s Office revealed that it obtained a treasure trove of messages and call logs from a BlackBerry that belonged to President Donald Trump’s personal attorney.
Two young men were beaten to death in India on Saturday after residents suspected they were child kidnappers, the BBC and Aljazeera report. The men, Nilotpal Das, a 29-year-old audio engineer and Abijeet Nath, a 30-year-old digital artist, reportedly stopped in a remote village to ask for directions, but were attacked…
Federal prosecutors have accused Paul Manafort of witness tampering, alleging that he used WhatsApp and Telegram in an attempt to coordinate his testimony with old business associates. Manafort, Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, may have thought that he was being sneaky by using encrypted chat apps, but Manafort…
When Mark Zuckerberg testified in front of members of the European Parliament on Tuesday, he insisted that Facebook was ready for Friday, the day when the European Unions’s strict new data privacy law went into effect. But users in Europe have already filed complaints against Facebook and others today, saying the tech…
Jan Koum, the billionaire CEO of Facebook subsidiary WhatsApp, is leaving the company following disputes over “the popular messaging service’s strategy and Facebook’s attempts to use its personal data and weaken its encryption,” the Washington Post reported on Monday.
Police in Wales managed to arrest and convict a drug dealer by identifying his fingerprint from a photo posted on WhatsApp, a technique that the local law enforcement is calling “groundbreaking,” according to the BBC.
Since WhatsApp got bought by Facebook in 2014, its co-founders have taken two very different paths. Jan Koum stayed on to serve as the company’s CEO, while Brian Acton left after a few years to head up the Signal Foundation, an organization that competes with WhatsApp and Facebook thanks to its own encrypted messaging…
WhatsApp just agreed not to share the personal information of its users in the European Union with Facebook until it can comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which will be enforced in May. It’s not a permanent commitment, and there are a few noteworthy exceptions, but it’s good news for WhatsApp…
The government of Sri Lanka ordered internet and mobile service providers to temporarily block Facebook and its subsidiaries WhatsApp and Instagram, as well as separate messaging service Viber, this week as part of a crackdown on what officials said was rampant online hate speech fueling real-life violence.
After allegedly trying to hold discussions with Facebook for the past “several years,” BlackBerry finally decided to take Facebook to court today, filing a patent infringement lawsuit against the social media giant.
The engines are already pulling away by the time we get to a reported dryer fire. There won’t be any footage of flames lapping up from the basement or smoke inhalation victims being wheeled into ambulances through the drizzling gloom—not tonight anyway. The rain makes shootings unlikely too, in Adam’s opinion, but…
In July, Wickr announced that its paying users could make encrypted conference calls. For a company prioritizing businesses over consumers, this was a crucial development. But it also helped Wickr stand out from other secure messaging apps like Signal and WhatsApp, which have yet to roll out encrypted group calls. And…
A team of crytopgraphers from Germany’s Ruhr University Bochum say they have uncovered flaws in WhatsApp’s security that could limit the benefits of the messaging service’s vaunted end-to-end encryption in group chats.
France’s data privacy agency CNIL has ordered WhatsApp to stop sharing data with its owner Facebook, the Verge reported, saying users never consented to sharing data for business intelligence or targeted advertising functions when Facebook disclosed the collection last year.
Facebook is desperate to do business in China, but authorities in the country are increasingly comfortable with shutting out foreign companies and tightening restrictions on internet communications. On Tuesday, Facebook’s only major product that is still permitted by authorities fell victim to the “Great Firewall” and…
Big fans of the cloud as we are, there’s no doubt relying solely on keeping your stuff stored remotely is a risky strategy. Accounts get hacked. Companies fold. And if you don’t have backups of your most precious Snapchats and Gmails, then they can disappear in a puff of data center smoke. Here’s how to make sure…
