by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Networking, Social Media, Technology
London : The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) has warned Facebook over its planned integration of its chat services — WhatsApp, Messenger and photo-sharing app Instagram, asking the social media giant to provide it with an “urgent briefing” on the proposals.
In a statement, the Dublin-headquartered Irish watchdog said it understood the plan was at a “very early conceptual stage”.
“While we understand that Facebook’s proposal to integrate the Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram platforms is at a very early conceptual stage of development, the Irish DPC has asked Facebook Ireland for an urgent briefing on what is being proposed,” the watchdog said in a statement late on Monday.
“The Irish DPC will be very closely scrutinising Facebook’s plans as they develop, particularly insofar as they involve the sharing and merging of personal data between different Facebook companies,” it added.
The New York Times reported on January 25 that all of the three Facebook apps will support end-to-end encryption but the company was yet to provide a timeline for when this will happen.
Messenger and Instagram would continue to operate as stand-alone apps.
According to the Irish watchdog, “previous proposals to share data between Facebook companies have given rise to significant data protection concerns and the Irish DPC will be seeking early assurances that all such concerns will be fully taken into account by Facebook in further developing this proposal”.
“It must be emphasised that ultimately the proposed integration can only occur in the EU if it is capable of meeting all of the requirements of the GDPR,” the statement read.
The move could let the social networking giant tout higher user engagement to advertisers, thus, ramping up its advertising division at a time when overall growth has slowed down.
Facebook has the most users of any other social media platform, and by combining its assets this way, the company could more directly compete with Apple’s iMessage and Google’s messaging services, according to The Verge.
WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption — the hallmark of users’ security — may also go for a toss if Facebook integrates the popular mobile messaging platform with not-that-secure Instagram and Messenger.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Networking, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : Facebook-owned WhatsApp has been dropping support for dated devices and operating systems (OS) from time to time and now it is ending support for iOS 7 and older versions, Android 2.3.7 and Nokia Series 40 (S40).
What this means is that users of Nokia Series 40 device will no longer be able to create new WhatsApp accounts and some features of the app could stop functioning on the device at any time.
“When we started WhatsApp in 2009, people’s use of mobile devices looked very different from today. The Apple App Store was only a few months old. About 70 per cent of smartphones sold at the time had operating systems offered by BlackBerry and Nokia.
Mobile operating systems offered by Google, Apple and Microsoft — which account for 99.5 per cent of sales today — were on less than 25 per cent of mobile devices sold at the time,” it said in a blog post on Sunday.
You will, however, still be able to use WhatsApp on the device though, according to the Dignited.
The Nokia S40 OS was seen in the company’s mid-tier devices like Nokia Asha 201, Nokia Asha 205, Nokia Asha 210, Nokia Asha 230, Nokia Asha 500, Nokia Asha 501, Nokia Asha 502, Nokia Asha 503, Nokia 206, Nokia 208, Nokia 301, Nokia 515.
Earlier, WhatsApp had outlined devices and OS that would be cut off from its support room and affixed dates to them accordingly. Nokia S40 would be supported until December 31, 2018, Android versions 2.3.7 and older until February 1, 2020 and iOS 7 and older until February 1, 2020.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Branding, Markets, Networking, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : WhatsApp is reportedly working out on three new features, including linking your account to Instagram, in order to improve its chat and notifications for its over 1.5 billion users.
Apart from Linked Accounts, the two other features under development are: Vacation and Silent Mode, said WABetaInfo, a popular website that tracks WhatsApp, on Wednesday.
“WhatsApp is working right now on a new feature that allows to link your account with external services.
“The feature appears mainly developed for WhatsApp Business, but some references were found in the normal WhatsApp app too,” said the website.
The Linked Accounts option will be located under your profile settings.
“Currently, the first supported external service is Instagram. Tapping Instagram, after inserting your credentials, your WhatsApp account will be correctly linked to your Instagram profile,” it added.
Currently, when you archive a chat, WhatsApp automatically unarchives it once a new message is received from that chat.
With the Vacation Mode feature, archived chats won’t be unarchived if you have previously muted them.
The option will be available in WhatsApp Settings and then Notifications.
“The Vacation mode is also useful if you don’t want a specific chat in your Chats List: if you mute and archive it, you will never see it again, except if you view your Archived Chats,” the report said.
The silent mode feature for Android allows to hide the app badge for muted chats.
“Thanks to this feature, you will never see the badge when you receive a message from muted chats and groups. The feature is already enabled by default,” the report added.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Markets, Networking, Online Marketing, SMEs, Social Media, Technology
New Delhi : Silicon Valley-based bot and messaging platform Gupshup on Wednesday announced that it is working with WhatsApp Business to enable enterprises build a better brand presence on the platform.
Gupshup has integrated the enterprise messaging environment with WhatsApp Business to enable rich interactive messaging for better customer engagement, the company said in a statement.
The deployment solution enables two-way smart messaging and helps enterprises deploy on WhatsApp Business within a few weeks, thus reducing time to market.
WhatsApp Business has an active user base of over 3 million people globally. It is a standalone app separate from the other version of instant messaging platform WhatsApp being used by over 1.5 billion people.
“We are excited to be among the first to provide solutions to enable enterprises early access to WhatsApp Business, and to be taking this instrumental step towards simplifying how businesses and consumers communicate with each other,” Ravi Sundararajan, Chief Operating Officer (COO), Gupshup, said in a statement.
Some of the key enterprises enabled by Gupshup to gain early access to WhatsApp Business include DishTV and banks such as Citibank, Kotak Mahindra, IndusInd and ICICI.
Gupshup offers programmable messaging Application Program Interface (APIs) and managed services that enterprises can use to connect with customers over WhatsApp and to orchestrate conversational messaging experiences.
Founded in 2004, Gupshup’s messaging platform is used by more than 36,000 developers building services that process over 4.5 billion messages per month and more than 225 billion cumulative.
Gupshup’s bot platform provides tools for the entire bot lifecycle enabling developers to quickly and easily build, test, deploy, monitor and track bots.
Earlier this year, WhatsApp rolled out “WhatsApp Business” in India to help businesses communicate better with their customers.
As an early access solution provider for WhatsApp Business, Gupshup will help enterprises quickly deploy the WhatsApp Business implementations within a few weeks, said the company.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, News, Politics, Social Media
New Delhi : The Union Home Ministry has issued an advisory to states and Union Territories (UTs) asking them to take measures to prevent incidents of mob lynching fuelled by rumours of child lifting circulating on social media, an official said on Thursday.
The advisory urged the states as well as the UTs to keep a watch for “early detection of such rumours and initiate effective measures for countering them”.
“The states and UTs have been asked to direct district administrations to identify vulnerable areas and conduct community outreach programmes for creating awareness and building confidence,” the advisory said.
It was also stressed that complaints of child abduction or kidnapping should be properly investigated to instil confidence among the affected persons.
The mob attacks were mostly sparked off by rumours of child lifting sent out through WhatsApp messaging service.
Five persons were beaten to death by a mob in Maharashtra’s Dhule district on suspicion of being child-lifters.
A series of similar unfortunate incidents has rocked many states, including Assam, Karnataka, Tripura and West Bengal, with people being beaten to death simply on suspicion of being child-lifters or thieves owing to false rumours on social media.
The Indian government on Tuesday asked WhatsApp to take immediate action to end the menace of spreading messages that impact the country’s law and order situation and ensure that the platform is not used for such malafide activities.
—IANS
