In great financial difficulty, Meta goes hunting for unofficial WhatsApp apps, which will now be blocked for security reasons. And their users risk a permanent banishment from messaging!
Despite the many criticisms that Twitter has suffered since its eventful takeover by Elon Musk, it seems that Meta is determined to follow in the footsteps of the blue bird! Indeed, the company has decided to offer a paid subscription called Meta Verified for Facebook and Instagram, which allows you to benefit from new security functions and a verification badge, like what Twitter Blue offers – a decision which is far from making people happy. And she is obviously preparing to continue her momentum! At the end of January, Elon Musk’s social network announced that it was banning all third-party applications from the platform – which have nevertheless contributed to its popularity – in order to centralize all Internet users on a single application and thus generate more revenue thanks to the advertisement. An idea that seems to have made its way into the mind of Mark Zuckerberg, in great financial difficulty since the loss of advertising revenue with Apple and the failure of the metaverse – which forces Meta to chain major layoffs. As reported Nation World Newsthe firm is preparing to go hunting for third-party WhatsApp applications and those who use them.
WhatsApp: the hunt for third-party apps and their users
Apart from the official WhatsApp application, which is used by the majority of users, there are also third-party applications that provide access to instant messaging while offering additional functions. This is the case of WhatsApp Plus or GBWhatsApp, a modified version of WhatsApp on Android which offers a fully customizable interface, import of custom fonts and stickers, manual switch to offline status, security options additional, etc. Meta has therefore decided to no longer authorize the operation of these famous WhatsApp APKs. Affected users will initially receive a warning urging them to download the official application as soon as possible from the Play Store or the App Store while receiving a temporary suspension. If they persist, their account may be permanently blocked.
The official reason behind this decision is security. Indeed, as these third-party applications cannot be downloaded from an official store such as the Play Store – the user therefore does not benefit from its protections – they may contain malware, including for each update. Another problem: the Play Store is teeming with fraudulent WhatsApp clones which, while promising additional features, actually contain malware that steals victims’ personal data. Meta has not yet indicated when and how this hunt will begin.