Silicon Valley, United States of America (USA)- WhatsApp is set to increase the cap on group participants from the current 512 to 1 024 as the limitations have left many users frustrated and opting for other similar apps like Telegram.
While some users may be frustrated with having so many in a group and receiving thousands of messages daily, having groups with more users will suit media houses, businesses and organizations to share information quickly with more people.
Last week, WhatsApp started rolling out its Premium subscription plan for businesses in the latest beta versions of the Android and iOS apps.
In its current beta form, the plan adds two significant features, firstly, businesses can link up to 10 devices to the same account to make managing conversations between multiple employees and customers easier and general WhatsApp users can only use the same account on up to four devices.
Secondly, businesses will be able to create a custom short link that directs customers to a landing page or a WhatsApp chat.
However, the existing WhatsApp for Business features will remain free, and the subscription service will be optional but the Premium plan will not be available to users of the standard WhatsApp app.
Meanwhile, Kaspersky (an anti-virus production company) has revealed that an unofficial WhatsApp application for Android devices, YoWhatsApp, has been stealing user account keys.
YoWhatsApp lets users communicate with two WhatsApp numbers on a single device and offers features such as anonymous messaging, the ability to view people’s deleted messages, and password-protecting specific chats.
It also uses similar permissions to the official version of WhatsApp and is promoted on popular applications, including Snaptube and Vidmate.
However, analysts at Kaspersky found that version V2.22.11.75 of the unofficial app can steal account keys, allowing malicious actors to take control of users’ accounts.
“We found a malicious module that we detect as Trojan.AndroidOS.Triada. eq. The module decrypted and launched the Trojan.AndroidOS.Triada. ef main payload. If the keys are stolen, a user of a malicious WhatsApp mod can lose control over their account,” said Kaspersky in a statement.
In addition, Kaspersky said cybercriminals commonly use the stolen keys in open-source utilities that enable the use of a WhatsApp account without the actual client citing that the permissions requested by YoWhatsApp are the same as those requested by the official app and include aspects like accessing SMS adding that the trojan within the app gains these same permissions.
