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How do i connect to someone on whatsapp


How to Add Someone on WhatsApp in 4 Simple Steps

WhatsApp is a communication platform that allows users to call, text and video chat through an internet connection as opposed to their regular cell phone service.

People use WhatsApp to communicate with people who live in other countries. If you have a partner, family member, or friend living abroad, this app makes it possible to affordably communicate anywhere you have a wifi connection.

It could also be used as part of your internal communication plan if your organization has locations around the world. 

Steps to add someone on WhatsApp

  1. Open "chats"
  2. Begin a new chat
  3. Create a new contact
  4. Message your friend

To communicate with those people, however, they have to be friends with you on the app. Read this article to learn how to add friends on WhatsApp so you can stay in touch for the long term.

You add someone on WhatsApp in the same way you add them to your phone contacts: by creating a new contact for them with their phone number.

Yes, that’s right: in order to add someone on WhatsApp, you have to have their phone number. Let’s dive into the details.

1. Open up “Chats”

Make sure you have WhatsApp downloaded and have created your account. In order to begin talking with people, open up the “Chats” window.

2. Begin a new chat

To begin a new chat, click on the icon on the top right corner of the screen. 

Tip: If you already have someone’s contact information, and they already have a WhatsApp profile, you don’t need to worry about adding them! You can simply click on their name and open a new chat.


Otherwise, you’ll have to add people manually. Begin by selecting “New Contact.” 

3. Create a new contact

Add all of the contact information for that person. Keep in mind that if they are in a different country, you will have to enter that in their contact information. Different countries have different country codes which help determine where to send your correspondence.  

4. Message your friend

Once you’ve saved their contact information, you’re ready to chat. Simply search their name in your contacts list, click on their name, and a new chat window appears. You can begin texting or calling them just as would over the phone! 

Now you know what’s up

Now that you know how to add new friends, you’re ready to get chattin’ with anyone, anywhere. Have fun, and tell ‘em I said hi!

Grace Pinegar

Grace Pinegar is a lifelong storyteller with an extensive background in various forms such as acting, journalism, improv, research, and content marketing. She was raised in Texas, educated in Missouri, worked in Chicago, and is now a proud New Yorker. (she/her/hers)

How to Add a Contact in WhatsApp Messenger on Android, iOS

With more than 2 billion worldwide users in 180-plus countries and over 1 billion daily active users, WhatsApp is one of the most popular ways to communicate globally. WhatsApp Messenger is now the leading mobile messaging app in 169 countries, including India, Germany, Russia, and the U.K., but not in the U.S., where Messenger dominates the scene.

Contents

  • How to add contacts in iOS
  • How to add contacts in Android
  • How to invite a friend to join WhatsApp on an iOS device
  • How to add a friend from a different country
  • How to add a contact via QR Code

Difficulty

Easy

Duration

10 minutes

What You Need

  • Android device

  • iOS device

If you have lots of contacts in your phone, adding them individually to WhatsApp can be tedious and time-consuming. We’ve put together a guide on the fastest and easiest way to get all of your domestic and international contacts into WhatsApp, so you can spend more time chatting and less time tapping. The following examples use iOS 14 and Android 10, but the steps are identical for previous OS versions, as WhatsApp has kept the interface consistent for customer ease of use.

How to add contacts in iOS

Follow these steps to add contacts to your iOS device:

Step 1: In the Chat pane, tap the Chat icon at the upper right of the window.

Step 2: On the next screen, tap New Contact.

Step 3: Type in the name and telephone number of the person you want to add — name, telephone number, and email are mandatory.

Step 4: The contact information will then appear in your Contacts.

How to add contacts in Android

Here's how to add contacts on your Android device:

Step 1: From the Chats pane, tap the Chat icon at the bottom right of the screen.

Step 2: Select New Contact from the next screen.

Step 3: Enter the contact information of the person you want to add.

Step 4: Tap Save at the upper right of the window. The next screen will display the entire contact.

Step 5: Your new contact will also appear in your address book.

How to invite a friend to join WhatsApp on an iOS device

As you start using WhatsApp more often, you may want to add more people to your contacts. Because you can only communicate with people who already have WhatsApp, you may have to employ some friendly persuasion to get your buddies to download yet another app onto their crowded phones.

Follow these steps to invite a friend to WhatsApp on your iOS device:

Step 1: Go to the Chat window and tap on the chat icon in the upper right.

Step 2: On the next screen, scroll to the bottom.

Step 3: Tap on Invite Friends to WhatsApp.

Step 4: Choose from the menu to Mail or Message the invite.

Step 5: Choose your friend from your contacts list and tap the Send 1 Invite button.

Step 6: WhatsApp sends a prewritten note with an invite and a link to the app in the App Store.

How to invite a friend to join WhatsApp on an iOS device

Follow these steps to invite a friend to WhatsApp on your Android:

Step 1: Go to the Chat pane and start a new chat.

Step 2: In the next pane, tap Invite friends.

Step 3: The app lets you access email and messages, where you can send a message to your friend.

Step 4: Tap Send.

Step 5: Your friend gets a link to WhatsApp Messenger in the Google Play Store that they can download so they can sign in.

How to add a friend from a different country

When you’re adding a friend with an international phone number to your contact list, you’ll follow the same general steps for adding a contact ordinarily. However, you’ll still want to ensure that you enter the foreign phone number properly or it won’t call.

Step 1: When adding the contact’s phone number, always start with a plus sign (+).

Step 2: Type the country code and a nation-specific numerical prefix, followed by the phone number. Search online to find the country code if you don’t know it.

Step 3: Remove any leading zeros or calling codes from the phone number after entering the country code.

How to add a contact via QR Code

Using custom QR codes is an easy way to share your contact information with other WhatsApp users because it will ensure there are no human input errors in creating a new contact — whatever you put into the code will be included in the contact. QR Codes can save or share a contact, start a chat, or add someone to a group. You can easily add a person to your WhatsApp contacts by scanning their QR Code or share your QR code with others via the app’s Share button. Here’s how to create a WhatsApp QR code. The process is the same on both iOS and Android.

Step 1: Open WhatsApp > Settings.

Step 2: Tap on the QR Code icon next to your name.

Step 3: Tap Scan > OK.

Step 4: Hold your smartphone over the QR Code until it vibrates in recognition.

Step 5: Tap Add to Contacts.

Step 6: Alternately, to use the WhatsApp camera, tap the WhatsApp > Camera icon (top menu on Android, bottom menu on iOS).

Step 7: Center your phone over the QR Code until it vibrates.

Step 8: Tap Add to Contacts.

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Messenger Growth Story Without Marketing - Offtop on vc.

ru

Marketing Specialist Morgan Brown has published a note on WhatsApp's growth story: from the first status app to the explosive growth of the messenger and its acquisition by Facebook. In the Growth Hacks section - an adapted translation of the material.

93 382 views

Jan Koum founded WhatsApp in April 2009, and the very next month, the first version of the application appeared in the App Store. Written in the Erlang programming language, WhatsApp is a cross-platform messenger that serves as a reliable and affordable alternative to SMS and MMS messages, because mobile operators charge a fee for each such message. nine0003

WhatsApp is currently free for the first year, after which you have to pay 99 cents per year. It sounds very simple, and it is no coincidence. Kum has often said that he would like to “do just one project, but do it well,” and the key to doing this was WhatsApp, which he tried to keep simple, but at the same time highly functional.

In October 2009, Kuma's friend and former Yahoo colleague Brian Acton raised $250,000 in seed money for WhatsApp, becoming a co-founder of the project and a substantial stake in the company. As the app began to gain momentum, Acton and Koum were overwhelmed by the attention they received from interested venture capitalists, but both of them resisted at first. nine0003

Koum and Acton wanted to make a strong, ad-free medium in the first place, and they felt that if they accepted the venture capital offer, they would have to compromise at some point. However, Jim Getz of Sequoia Capital didn't want to give up and worked for months on end to arrange a meeting with either Koum or Acton. Finally, in April 2011, after Goetz promised that there would be no ads on WhatsApp, the founders of the project accepted $8 million in venture capital from Sequoia. nine0003

By November 2011, WhatsApp became the #1 paid social app for iOS, with over 10 million downloads for the Android app. In July 2013, WhatsApp received another $50 million from Sequoia. And in February 2014, the company was acquired by Facebook for $19 billion, in the largest deal by any venture-backed company to date.

50 billion messages daily, more than 500 million users and about a million new users every day, all this indicates that WhatsApps has succeeded in realizing its plan and supplanting expensive SMS messages from mobile operators. nine0003

For comparison: in the fourth quarter of 2012, Twitter grew by 9 million users, Facebook - by forty. While growth is bound to slow at big companies like Twitter and Facebook, WhatsApp's growth is impressive nonetheless. The company plans to reach one billion users by August 2015, by which time it will be six years old - two years short of Facebook when it reached its billionth user.

So besides ease of use, what else is the secret behind WhatsApp's growth? nine0003

Early change of strategy

Having come up with the idea for the project, Koum quickly chose the name WhatsApp because it sounds like “What's up?”, and a week later he registered WhatsApp Inc. February 24, 2009, right on your birthday. But WhatsApp has not always been a messenger. After Kum had to miss phone calls more than once, since the gym where he worked out, it was impossible to use phones, he came up with the idea of ​​​​a mobile address book that would show the status of all contacts, so that friends would find out available whether you are, or at the gym, in a meeting, or your phone is running out of power and so on. nine0003

Around the same time, Kuma's Russian friend Alex Fishman hosted pizza and movie nights for the local Russian community at his home in west San Jose, sometimes with up to 40 people at a time. On such evenings, Koum spent hours discussing the idea of ​​his application with Fishman, and people from this group, including Alex Fishman himself, became the first users. After downloading the app, he ran into some issues, and then met with Koum at Tony Roma in San Jose to discuss them. While the idea was promising, acceptance for the app did not come overnight. nine0003

In fact, at that time Koum admitted to Acton (who was not yet in the project, and had not yet become a co-founder) that he was thinking of quitting and starting to look for a job. Acton gave Kuma some advice: “You would be an idiot if you quit everything now. Keep going for a few more months."

And as it turns out, Acton was right. Soon, Apple launched push notifications, which Koum built into WhatsApp. In the new version of the application, when users changed statuses, the program notifies all users from the contact list using push notifications. Users liked the feature so much that they started sending notifications to each other through the app, so Kum realized that he had accidentally created a mobile messenger. He explained: "If you can instantly connect with someone on the other side of the world with a device that is always with you, that's very powerful." nine0003

Seizing the opportunity, Koom released WhatsApp 2.0 which already had more messaging features, and the previously dreary bunch of users suddenly grew to 250,000 people, proving that Acton was right and Koom was on the right track.

What hindered the growth of WhatsApp

But before we dive into the factors behind WhatsApp's success, let's take a look at what separates WhatsApp from its competitors. Let's start, perhaps, with the fact that both Kum and Acton are equally intolerant of absurdity. A note from Acton was always pinned above Kuma's desk: “No ads! No games! No tricks!" nine0003

When the two first met in 1997, they bonded almost immediately over their "inability to talk nonsense," and when Koum joined Yahoo, where Acton already worked, this same "inability" only strengthened their friendship. It also influenced every WhatsApp decision they made, from user experience to marketing techniques.

As discussed above, Koum and Acton make it very clear that they don't like advertising. Perhaps they have left this since the days of Yahoo. In an interview with Fast Company, Kum explained that he considers smartphones to be a very personal device, so he considers using them for advertising unacceptable. He explains:

When you receive a message from a loved one, family member, or best friend, you want to reply to them immediately, and not be distracted by advertising.

So not only does WhatsApp not host any ads, but the company itself does not spend any money on advertising or user acquisition. Instead, the founders focused on creating a useful product. According to Goetz, "When we first started working with WhatsApp in January 2011, the messenger had more than a dozen direct competitors, and they were all based on advertising." In Botswana alone, there were about 16 such applications at that time. nine0003

Jan and Brian ignored stereotypes. Instead of targeting the right audience through ads (an approach they've disliked since the days of Yahoo), they've decided to do the opposite and charge a dollar for a product that's designed not to collect information about you. And this approach has been incredibly effective. Despite (or perhaps because of) the marketing ditching, the company experienced impressive viral growth because the product resonated with the audience, and more importantly, met the market demand. nine0003

But the "no bullshit" corporate policy applies to more than just advertising. Despite a huge user base and around 50 million messages a day, WhatsApp had only 55 employees at the time of Facebook's purchase, 32 of which were engineers. There is nothing superfluous when it comes to a company or an application.

Using an existing network

Discussing the success of WhatsApp, AOL co-founder Steve Case explains:

nine0002 When we launched AOL, only 3% of users were online, and they were only online one hour a week. With the rapid globalization of the Internet, times have changed. There are now about 2.5 billion people online all the time every day, so today it is quite realistic to grow from zero to 450 million users in four years.

There is no doubt that everything has turned out very well for the explosive growth of WhatsApp. First of all, the growth was made possible by the huge number of phones connected to the network. By relying on the infrastructure that already existed (mobile internet access via data packets quickly became part of the standard set of mobile services provided by operators), the company was able to grow quickly and cost-effectively, fully utilizing all its resources to create a better interaction experience. nine0003

Kum and Acton understood that more users are better, so they immediately began to develop WhatsApp not only for smartphone users. From the very beginning, they worked hard to make WhatsApp available to a large number of users, which meant that they needed to make their application cross-platform, that is, accessible to a wide range of mobile devices, including the oldest, the so-called "bricks", and all existing operating systems.

Now that many applications are developed only for iPhone owners, and the latest versions, WhatsApp has taken a different approach. Broad reach, large audience and universal practical benefit - that was the goal of the company.

The best and cheapest alternative to SMS and MMS messages

There is no doubt that the most significant impact on WhatsApp's growth curve was the fact that the application cost users many times less than sending SMS and MMS messages. After all, WhatsApp was not originally designed to send messages, but judging by the frequent status updates of WhatsApp 1.0 users, people were most interested in the ability to send messages, and mobile operators were not very good at it. nine0003

Since WhatsApp relied on 2G and 3G technologies, it allowed users to bypass the constant restrictions of mobile operators and the high cost of services. Many of the operators then charged per message, and the cost of a message increased during peak hours, sometimes they limited the number of messages. For example, in Singapore, some users were allowed to send no more than 100 messages per month, and in India, the government limited the number of messages on holidays to 10 per day. WhatsApp not only helped users bypass these restrictions, but also helped save a lot. nine0003

In fact, the lack of marketing spending and relying on the existing platform allowed WhatsApp to focus on creating and maintaining an application that provided valuable and in-demand services, sometimes even those that mobile operators did not have: group chat, the ability to share audio and video files , share your location, all for free the first year and only 99 cents thereafter. Compared to the exorbitant prices for messages on most carriers, WhatsApp looked very attractive, and new additional features made it even more enticing in the eyes of users. nine0003

Group chat was especially popular among young users, many of whom did not have access to this feature through the SMS service, while others could not afford to send so many messages. Group communication was so useful that it caused even more viral growth, as it allowed us to get away from the standard one-on-one correspondence.

All of this was accompanied by relatively little effort on the part of new WhatsApp users. The registration process is simple and flexible, instead of entering all the data for a long time, creating a username and password, users simply verify their phone numbers; and instead of creating a completely new social graph, the user sees a list of contacts from their phone book who have already installed WhatsApp. This makes the transition from text messages to chatting via WhatsApp completely painless. nine0003

Still, the most attractive thing about WhatsApp wasn't the cheaper service, the additional new features, or the flexibility of standard SMS messages. The real key to success was cross-platform interoperability, which allowed friends to communicate regardless of phone, operating system, mobile operator or country. While Blackberry's BBM and Apple's iMessage provided their own alternatives to SMS messages, they didn't allow messages to be sent to devices with other platforms. This is one of the most important pieces of the puzzle. WhatsApp is disrupting an established market with a more accessible, reliable, and functional service. nine0003

Think globally

Notably, the most expensive plans, the oldest and cheapest phones dominate the emerging markets where WhatsApp has become so popular. The cross-platform nature of WhatsApp, its availability on both smart and regular phones, allowed the company to gain a foothold in international markets very quickly. In fact, there is a feeling that the founders thought globally from the very beginning. In announcing on the WhatsApp blog that Facebook was buying the company, Koum claimed:

Nearly five years ago, we founded WhatsApp with one simple goal: to create a high-end product that would be used by everyone everywhere. Nothing else was important to us.

Staying in touch with someone who lives on the other side of the world is undoubtedly a more difficult task than communicating with someone who lives nearby. Kum was well aware of all the difficulties of global communication, after all, he himself comes from Ukraine, so WhatsApp was created to make this communication quick and easy, and so that everyone could afford to contact anyone, regardless of their location. nine0003

This global focus is another piece of the puzzle for WhatsApp. In December 2013, on the WhatsApp blog, Kum explained:

There was a New Zealand woman who had to move to South Africa to complete her Ph. D. A week before returning home, she met the man of her dreams. Even though they live thousands of miles apart, WhatsApp helps them feel closer than ever to each other. We also received an email from an Englishwoman who does charity work in Uganda. She said her team uses WhatsApp to send daily reports, photos and videos of the children they help. And she, in turn, shares all these materials in order to receive support from all over the world. Doctors in India are using WhatsApp to instantly send electrocardiograms of heart attack patients, saving valuable time and lives. In the mountains near Madrid, rescuers used WhatsApp to locate and rescue lost hikers. nine0003

In April 2014, WhatsApp went viral in Brazil, India, Mexico and Russia, further proving the effectiveness of the team's global approach. In fact, it is likely that the spread of the service attracted Facebook. With Facebook barely gaining new users in the US, Canada, and most of Europe, WhatsApp is a way for them to see what users in other countries are expecting from social networks.

Privacy

Along with the aforementioned functionality and features, privacy has always been one of Koum's main concerns. Dealing with private messages of users is always a huge responsibility, and this is something that the company takes very seriously. As Goetz explains:

WhatsApp does not collect your personal information such as name, gender, address or age. Registration takes place using a phone number, this innovation eliminates the need to remember names and passwords. And once delivered, the messages are deleted from the WhatsApp servers. nine0003

This is not at all what Jan was used to, because he grew up in a communist country with an active secret police. Jan's childhood taught him to appreciate communication without wiretapping. And while this feature isn't as visible as group chats or file sharing, WhatsApp makes sure that users' private messages remain private.

Word of mouth

All of the above factors have made WhatsApp a powerful and useful service. And as is often the case with such products, if the user has tried the application and felt its benefits, he wants to tell everyone around him about it. This word of mouth was and still is WhatsApp's main driver of growth, we've already talked about how the company doesn't spend money on user acquisition. nine0003

What's more, aside from the sheer number of articles that have surfaced since Facebook's acquisition of the messaging app, there were no more than 200 press coverage of WhatsApp, and most of those articles were written in the company's first two years of operation. In early 2011, when WhatsApp was in the top 20 best apps on the US App Store, a company employee asked Koum why he wasn't talking about it. He answered:

Marketing and the press will only raise dust. Dust will get into your eyes and you will no longer be able to work on the product. nine0003

It is this focus on the product, and the resulting good UX and painless registration, that has made a huge contribution to the spread of word of mouth about WhatsApp. Forbes writers Paul Nunes and Larry Downes refer to this strategy as "near-perfect market information," a phenomenon resulting from constant communication between consumers, in which "new products are adopted and effectively promoted from early adopters to new ones, who in turn recruiting the next, larger wave.” nine0003

Network effect

As more people connected to the service, WhatsApp's user base grew so much that it created a network effect. As is the case with other major networks like Facebook or Instagram, the value of WhatsApp has skyrocketed as more and more users started using the app.

If a user downloads WhatsApp and finds that 30 or 40 people in their contact list are already using the app, they will most likely not uninstall the app and even send invitations to new users. If the user has only two or three people in the contact list using WhatsApp, then this application will not be of great value to him. nine0003

Take payment on time

Today, WhatsApp spends approximately $500,000 to verify new users via SMS messages. Of course, this amount grew when the company itself grew, but even at the very beginning, most of the company's money resources were spent on these verification messages, the cost of one such message, at least for the first international users, could reach 65 cents. To offset the costs, and also to make sure WhatsApp doesn't grow too fast, the app has been periodically made free or $1.00. But after adding the ability to share photos in December 2009year, Kum and Acton noticed that the number of users is growing steadily, despite the fact that the application is paid, then Acton suggested leaving it paid.

After experimenting with a 99 cents per year subscription on Android devices, in July 2013 WhatsApp introduced the same rate for Apple devices as the company finally switched to an annual subscription payment model instead of a one-time app download fee. Today, users can download and use WhatsApp for free for a whole year, enough time for almost everyone to get hooked, after the first year, the user will be asked to renew their subscription. nine0003

Although WhatsApp's popularity dropped slightly in July 2013, the growth in the number of downloads, however, quickly stabilized, and the app's place in the top list of the most earning applications even increased. Much like the move to advertising, the decision of the founders of WhatsApp to charge a user fee, despite the huge number of free alternatives, is very surprising. However, the introduction of a paid business model was an important step in the growth of WhatsApp, and if the user has paid for the app, they will most likely continue to use it and invite friends. nine0003

As Koum explained in the December 2013 WhatsApp blog:

A few years ago, my friend Brian and I decided to create a messenger with one goal in mind: to create the world's best user experience. We decided that if our development team made messaging fast, easy and personal, then we would start charging users directly, without resorting to annoying banners, game promotions and all the other distractions that come with many similar messengers. nine0003

This elimination of "annoying banners, game promotions and all other distractions" is the true embodiment of Koum and Acton's "no bullshit" policy. It affects everything that happens in the company. This component of WhatsApp's success was the most important, as it helped the team to ignore the minutiae and focus all their attention on developing and debugging a truly useful product that, in general, sells itself.

Facebook effect

In 2012, when Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion, the platform had about 30 million users. In July of that year, just three months later, the number of active Instagram users increased to 80 million, more than doubling the base. The same thing happened, after it became known that Facebook acquired WhatsApp, the number of new messenger subscribers began to increase by 25 million users a month.

In many ways, this deal can be explained by Facebook's attempt to defend itself, so that WhatsApp will no longer become a competitor to the social network, but more importantly, giants such as Google will not be able to seize control of the already popular WhatsApp. nine0003

But that's only part of the story. As Mark Zuckerberg explained at the messenger acquisition press conference:

WhatsApp is the only widely used app we've seen that has more engagement and daily users than Facebook itself... Based on our experience of building global services with steady growth and user engagement, we believe that in the next five years WhatsApp will reach one billion users. nine0003

Therefore, the acquisition of the company, no doubt, was a good impetus for WhatsApp, since recently, this transaction has become a good impetus for further growth. After all, from the very beginning, Facebook has been interested in WhatsApp because the company has already shown a high percentage of engagement and good growth rates, the same was with Instagram.

Possible problems

In addition to the surge in new registrations, after the Facebook deal was announced, there was also negative feedback, which Kum on the WhatsApp blog calls "erroneous and irresponsible rumors about what our partnership will mean for WhatsApp users, and more specifically, that will be with their personal data and privacy. ” nine0003

However, in the same note, he continues to state:

If partnering with Facebook meant we had to give up our values, we wouldn't have made the deal. Instead, we form partnerships that allow us to work independently and autonomously from each other. Our core values ​​and beliefs will not change. Our principles will remain the same. Everything that made WhatsApp the leader in instant messaging will remain in place. Speculation to the contrary is not only unfounded, but also irresponsible. They only scare people, make them think that we will start collecting all possible personal data. This is not true, and it is important for us to know that you understand this. Make no mistake, our future partnership with Facebook will not adversely affect the mindset that keeps us where we are. We remain committed to delivering on the promise made by WhatsApp everywhere, we want people around the world to be able to communicate freely and without fear. nine0003

Kum assures users that respect for privacy is "in [WhatsApp's] DNA", and that the number of users continues to grow shows that the majority of users trust the application. While this shouldn't be a concern for WhatsApp users, the company is often criticized for stealing revenue from mobile operators. But the company (obviously) disagrees with that statement. In a 2012 interview with Reuters, Acton claimed otherwise:

I see this situation from a different angle, we are promoting a widespread transition to tariff plans with a lot of Internet traffic, and it is mobile operators who provide these tariff plans, so they only benefit from this. … It's all about traffic.

Another, even bigger problem with WhatsApp, says AOL co-founder Steve Case, is that the company's $19 billion valuation leaves many wondering if WhatsApp is just another bubble. “I have already seen AOL grow from its 70 millionth IPO in 1992 to an estimated value of $150 billion in less than 10 years,” Case says. “And now I seem to be experiencing deja vu.” However, he goes on to argue that things have changed so much that now more than ever, we have good reason to watch WhatsApp's growth trajectory.

Finally, many are concerned that WhatsApp's growth will eventually slow down. As we've said before, the growth slowdown is already happening with giants like Facebook and Twitter, as any user base grows, it's harder and harder to find new people. More importantly, where is the ceiling for the natural decline in the growth of WhatsApp, an application built on top of the widespread mobile network. nine0003

5 signs that someone is reading your Whatsapp conversation and remains invisible

How to read other people's Whatsapp messages from your phone

After a series of updates, Whatsapp received an important feature - the ability to work on multiple devices at the same time. A new opportunity was created for convenience, but it was immediately used for criminal purposes. In Europe and the United States, there are cases when attackers, under the guise of a request for a call, take the victim’s device, scan a special QR code and gain access to the correspondence. The psychological technique works mainly with women and teenagers, but the end of the story is the same for everyone - extortion, theft of intimate photos and the threat to reveal the most intimate secrets to relatives or colleagues. The easiest way to close such a vulnerability is not to give outsiders (and relatives too) your device for a long time or set a password to launch the application. nine0003

How to hack Whatsapp and how to protect it from surveillance

Photo © Shutterstock

Determining that someone else has access to your account is quite simple. You need to go to "Settings" and go to "Associated devices". This menu will show all the devices that use your account. They can be removed, leaving one, two or three reliable means of communication. One of the most vulnerable points of Whatsapp is the so-called "floating" widget - a utility (add-on) for an Android application. The attackers copy the original widgets - a special "floating" algorithm is left inside the program, which does not show activity at the stage of checking the program by store administrators. The delayed activation mechanism starts working a couple of days after installation on the device. The main sign that something is not right with the phone is increased heating and an increase in traffic for Whatsapp. nine0003

Erase it immediately: 6 reasons to urgently remove WhatsApp from your phone

How to read deleted Whatsapp messages?

Reading deleted messages is another nuisance that can overtake a user after an outsider intercepts access to his device. The problem is that here the owners of Whatsapp got caught in their own lies. They used to state that a Whatsapp message is automatically deleted from the server as soon as the user deletes it from the device. But over time, it turned out that this is not so: messages are stored for some time both on the devices themselves and on the "third party" in case someone complains about it and the signal has to be responded to. The backdoor was opened by hackers who wrote an application for Android. Once installed on a smartphone, it made it possible to synchronize the messenger with a hacker program and penetrate the notification history, where all messages, including deleted ones, are visible. It is not known whether this vulnerability has been fixed at the moment, but one of the indirect signs that your deleted messages are being restored is their "revival" in the correspondence. At least, such symptoms are reported by foreign users. nine0003

Extensions

Photo © Shutterstock

Messenger extensions are popular exclusively with Android users. In the Apple ecosystem, such programs do not take root, and their verification by moderators before publication often leads to the removal and ban of "developers". Widgets for multitasking, cleaning Whatsapp memory and other third-party applications that require the right to synchronize with contacts and messenger conversations slow down Whatsapp in almost 100% of cases, and in the worst case, steal user data by taking screenshots and uploading data to unknown servers. Avoiding such a "leak" is easy - you should not install anything on your device other than the original Whatsapp. nine0003

Sending a chat by mail

One of the critical vulnerabilities of Whatsapp was its basic function. Through "sending a chat" you can upload all correspondence with any user to any mail. The program does not ask you to confirm this action - just select the addressee, and a letter with a complete archive of messages will be sent to his email inbox. Deleted text files will not be there, but the title will contain a phrase from the developers: "Messages and calls are end-to-end encrypted. Third parties, including WhatsApp, cannot read your messages or listen to calls." And this is in correspondence, to which, it seems, no one has access. nine0003

Refuse immediately: Why you need to urgently delete WhatsApp from your phone

Why Whatsapp does not work and does not send messages

for hygienic reasons. But there are still symptoms of a real hack, which may be behind attackers with special skills. The first and most important is the delay in the network when downloading correspondence. If Whatsapp is installed on more than one device, it will take some time to download.

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