Unfortunately, young people are also perhaps the most vulnerable to ransomware attacks. However, it’s safe to say that features like Status, Snapchat Stories and Instagram Stories are most popular amongst young kids who enjoy the ability to post weird and wonderful images that won’t be saved on a profile indefinitely. Who are these types of features usually aimed at? It’s possible that Whatsapp Status could be a ploy to encourage less tech-savvy users to cross over to more involving social media, like Facebook itself, after having tried out the new Whatsapp feature for the first time. Though the vulnerability in that app is by no means a cause for great concern in itself, it shows that encrypted messaging apps are not impenetrable. For these attackers, it’s a probability game the more users they try to attack the more likely they will succeed.Īpple’s, iOS Messenger, has recently been exposed by cybersecurity experts.
However, the fact that it boasts millions of users still makes it a target for hackers who seek to carry out cyber attacks on large amounts of people. WhatsApp certainly prides itself on being a secure app with its end-to-end encryption, and rightly so. Hackers Can Breach WhatsApp’s Vulnerabilities We don’t know what these people could do with this information,” adds Hervé Lambert. “ We have to take into consideration that we can’t tell certain details of our private lives to all our contacts. Think of the amount of work acquaintances or casual contacts that will have access to potentially private posts. To some, this may entail a real invasion of privacy as most people hand out their phone number much more readily than they accept someone on social media. All of your statuses will be visible to any contact you have on your phone. The default setting on WhatsApp Status will be set to public. “ After having carried out various studies on the behavior of people on social media, we’ve detected a few potential risks that all users of this new version of WhatsApp Status should recognize.” Your Status Will Be “Public” By Default Hervé Lambert, Retail Global Consumer Operations Manager at Panda Security says that the use of Whatsapp Status is still not risk-free: In the Status feature statement, Jan Koum has said “ yes, even your status updates are end-to-end encrypted.” But Is It Really As Safe As They Say? One of the interesting points that Whatsapp have always made sure to emphasize in their blog is the “security by default” principle which will be upheld by Stories. WhatsApp, with over a billion users, have really taken on the competition here. It’s not the first Facebook-led Snapchat Stories copycat, but it’s perhaps the most ambitious. The instant messaging company’s new WhatsApp Status feature will allow users to privately share edited photos, videos and GIFs, with their contacts, that will disappear after 24 hours. WhatsApp –the Facebook-owned giant that really needs no introduction– is seemingly on a mission for world domination, this time, taking on Snapchat.