Skip to footer

WhatsApp begins crackdown on third party app

Users of the third party WhatsApp service WhatsApp Plus found themselves booted from the service for 24 hours. Why the crackdown now?

|
Dado Ruvic/Reuters/File
Whatsapp App's logo is seen behind a phone that is logged on to Facebook in Bosnia. Users of a third party WhatsApp app found themselves booted from the service for 24 hours after WhatsApp began a crackdown on the third party app for security flaws.

Users of a third party WhatsApp service found themselves banned from the official WhatsApp for 24 hours for violating its terms of service.

The reason? WhatsApp points out that the third party source code wasn’t verifiable, and therefore posed threats to user privacy and security. But industry followers also pointed out the extra features the third party app offered could be monetized by WhatsApp in the future.

The app in question is WhatsApp Plus, which is not officially affiliated with WhatsApp, despite its name.

WhatsApp Plus is a companion app available in a third party app store (not the Apple App Store or Google Play) that can be used with WhatsApp on Android phones. The app allowed users further customization options, including larger attachment sizes and log-in anonymity (the real WhatsApp displays the last time a user has logged on).

According to WhatsApp Plus’ Google+ page, the company received a cease-and-desist letter from WhatsApp and has ended operations. “We are obligated to remove all download links and unfortunately delete this community,” wrote WhatsApp Plus founder Mounib Al Rifai.

In its FAQ section, WhatsApp explained that the third party app could create security issues for WhatsApp users.

“Please be aware that WhatsApp Plus contains source code which WhatsApp cannot guarantee as safe and that your private information is potentially being passed to 3rd parties without your knowledge or authorization,” WhatsApp writes.

As a penalty for using the third party service, users of WhatsApp Plus are banned from using WhatsApp for 24 hours.

However, Joss Wright from the Oxford Internet Institute pointed out that WhatsApp, which was bought by Facebook for a whopping $19 billion last year, could have made the move to ensure future monetization efforts weren’t threatened.

"That could potentially prevent it from adding services later for an added cost," he says to the BBC. "Or if it wants to add adverts later and ensure they are being served to the people who should be seeing them, then that it needs to maintain control and prevent the rules that it has set from being bypassed by third-party clients."

WhatsApp claims to have more than 700 million users worldwide who send an average of 30 billion messages everyday. One app store reports WhatsApp Plus had about 35 million downloads since its launch in 2012. 

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to WhatsApp begins crackdown on third party app
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/Horizons/2015/0122/WhatsApp-begins-crackdown-on-third-party-app
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe