Beware! Fake version of WhatsApp found on Google Play Store

A fake and possibly malicious version of Facebook-owned WhatsApp was found lurking on Google Play Store as "Update WhatsApp Messenger" with developer name as 'WhatsApp Inc*'.

By: IANS | London | Published:November 4, 2017 10:13 am

The original WhatsApp has 1 billion downloads.

WhatsApp is now back after brief global outage, was down in India too

A fake and possibly malicious version of Facebook-owned WhatsApp was found lurking on Google Play Store as “Update WhatsApp Messenger” with developer name as ‘WhatsApp Inc*’. When IANS checked it on the Play Store, we found the app has been downloaded up to 5,000 times. There is another version under the same name which has a million downloads. The original WhatsApp has 1 billion downloads.

The existence of the shady software was first highlighted by the popular WhatsApp change tracking website WABetaInfo, via Twitter user @MujtabaMHaq, IB Times reported late on Thursday.

According to the report, a version of popular mobile game Temple Run 2 can also be found which was uploaded in October. The software posing as WhatsApp Business already have several users complaining about it in comments section.

“DON’T DOWNLOAD THIS APP! IT’S FAKE! WhatsApp Business is not officially available yet for all,” the WABetaInfo social media account tweeted to its 30,000 followers. It added: “Check only official channels to download WhatsApp Business in future.” WhatsApp Business is yet to launch as a standalone service.

Meanwhile, WhatsApp was down for users worldwide for about an hour on Friday, with people complaining of issues with accessing its services. Some users took to Twitter to highlight problems with the messaging app. The Facebook-owned company later released a statement saying issue has been fixed, and apologised for any inconvenience.

According to downdetecor.com, 46 per cent users complained of problems with the connection while 41 per cent reported issues with sending or receiving messages. About 12 per cent WhatsApp had problems with ‘Last seen’ feature of the service.

With Tech Desk inputs