Tag: Whatsapp

How an Occupied Twitter Ruined Countless Lives

Commentary From the beginning of the COVID panic, it felt that something was very wrong. Never had a pandemic, much less a seasonal pathogenic wave, been treated as a quasi-military emergency requiring the upending of all freedoms and rights. What made it more bizarre was how alone those of us who objected felt until very…


EU Court Rejects WhatsApp Challenge Against EU Data Protection Board

PARIS—The Court of Justice of the European Union has dismissed as inadmissible an action brought by WhatsApp against a decision of the European Data Protection Board, it said in a statement on Wednesday. Following complaints about Whatsapp’s use of personal data in Ireland and a European Data Protection Board (EDPB) ruling on the issue, the…


WhatsApp Back Online After Global Outage Hits Users

BENGALURU/STOCKHOLM—Messaging app WhatsApp was starting to come back online at 0900 GMT and the company said the issue has been fixed after users across the world reported problems earlier on Tuesday. At around 0750 GMT, outage reporting site Downdetector had shown over 68,000 users had reported problems with the app in the United Kingdom. Problems…


Big Banks Face $1 Billion in Fines Over WhatsApp, Other Unapproved Message Tools, Says Report

Major banks such as JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Bank of America are collectively facing more than $1 billion in regulatory fines, after employees used unapproved communication tools, such as private email and messaging apps like WhatsApp. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) discovered the violations after probing several banks’ record-keeping practices relating to the use…


Is the EU Using China’s Methods of Surveillance?

Commentary Let’s play a quick game of word association. When you hear the word “China,” what other words spring to mind? Persecution, communism, tyranny, “zero-COVID” madness. How about surveillance? Having lived in China for nearly two years, I speak from experience when I say the following: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) monitors the actions of…


2 UK Police Officers Dismissed Over Racist Joke About Duchess of Sussex

Two Metropolitan Police officers who posted a racist joke about the Duchess of Sussex and other offensive messages in a WhatsApp chat have been sacked. A disciplinary tribunal ruled on Friday that the actions of PC Paul Hefford and PC Sukhdev Jeer, who were based at Bethnal Green police station in east London, amounted to…


British Police Officer Jailed for Sharing ‘Offensive’ George Floyd Memes on WhatsApp

A British police officer who shared material that was deemed “grossly offensive and racist” via WhatsApp has been jailed for 20 weeks. On Tuesday, former West Mercia Police officer James Watts was sentenced following a hearing at Birmingham Magistrates’ Court in the West Midlands. At an earlier hearing, he had pleaded guilty to 10 counts…


If You Have These Models of IPhone, WhatsApp Is Dropping Support for You

Meta Platforms Inc. messaging application WhatsApp is set to drop support for Apple Inc. running iOS10 and iOS 11. What Happened WhatsApp is planning to drop support for devices running iOS10 and iOS11, which means iPhone 5 and iPhone 5C models, which cannot be updated beyond these versions will be left out in the cold. The revelation…


Israeli Spyware Maker NSO Group Asks SCOTUS for Sovereign Immunity

Israeli spyware developer NSO Group is urging the Supreme Court to recognize it as a foreign government agent, a move it says would give it immunity under U.S. laws restricting lawsuits against foreign countries. NSO’s leading software product, Pegasus, allows operators to clandestinely surveil a suspect’s mobile phone—access contacts and messages, as well as the…


Russia Finds Meta Guilty of ‘Extremist Activity’, Says WhatsApp Can Stay

A Moscow court on Monday found Meta Platforms Inc. guilty of “extremist activity”, but said its decision would not affect the WhatsApp messenger service, focusing its ire on the company’s already banned Facebook and Instagram social networks. Moscow’s Tverskoi District Court upheld a lawsuit filed by Russian state prosecutors on banning the activities of Meta…