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WhatsApp to crack down on 'sinister' messages, says Indian government

Fast-spreading, fake stories have been blamed for deadly attacks

Tuesday 21 August 2018 16:21 BST

Revellers dressed up as dancers of 'Black Swan' check their mobile phones next to revellers dressed up as a Whatsapp logo as they take part in New Year's celebrations in Coin, near Malaga, southern Spain, early January 1, 2015 (REUTERS/Jon Nazca)

WhatsApp will stop "sinister" messages spreading across its platform, it has assured the Indian govenment.

The company is going to develop tools to combat the deadly problem of fake messages, according to its information technology minister.

In recent months, terrifying texts describing false news and hoaxes have spread quickly across the app. Despite not being true, they have regularly contributed towards deadly killings and other attacks, leading to a crackdown from the Indian government.

12 useful WhatsApp features you didn’t know existed

Show all 12

1/1212 useful WhatsApp features you didn’t know existed

12 useful WhatsApp features you didn’t know existed

Unsend messages

You can unsend a message by tapping and holding it, hitting the Delete symbol and selecting Delete for Everyone. The feature works for all types of messages, but only if they were sent less than seven minutes ago.

12 useful WhatsApp features you didn’t know existed

Dodge the blue ticks

WhatsApp’s blue ticks show when sent messages have been read, but you can disable them buy going to Settings > Account > Privacy > Read Receipts. However, bear in mind that, by doing so, you’ll lose the ability to see when your own sent messages have been read. Another, more fiddly way of reading your messages without triggering the blue ticks, is enabling Aeroplane Mode before opening your messages - just remember to close the app before switching Aeroplane Mode off again.

12 useful WhatsApp features you didn’t know existed

Hide your 'last seen' time

Prevent your friends from finding out when you were last online by hiding your last seen time. Go to Settings > Account > Privacy > Last Seen. As is the case with disabling read receipts, hiding your ‘last seen’ time will also stop you from seeing anybody else’s.

12 useful WhatsApp features you didn’t know existed

Limit data usage

You can control how much data you munch through on WhatsApp by limiting the types of media you automatically download on a mobile connection. Go to Settings > Data Usage and choose the best option for you.

12 useful WhatsApp features you didn’t know existed

Customise notifications

If you’re expecting an important WhatsApp message from someone, set a custom notification for them by opening the chat, tapping their name at the top and hitting Custom Notifications.

12 useful WhatsApp features you didn’t know existed

Format your messages

To jazz up any of your messages, simply highlight it by tapping and holding it, hit the More Options key on the pop-up menu and tap the formatting option you want - bold, italic, strikethrough or monospace.

12 useful WhatsApp features you didn’t know existed

Type hands-free

You can get Siri or Google Assistant to type your WhatsApp messages out for you by saying either “Hey Siri” or “Okay Google”, followed by the name of the person you want to message and the actual contents of the message.

12 useful WhatsApp features you didn’t know existed

Mark chats as unread

When you’ve read a message but can’t reply to it straight away, you can set a visual reminder by marking it as unread. On Android, long-press the conversation, and on iOS, swipe from left to right on a chat.

12 useful WhatsApp features you didn’t know existed

Email entire conversations

You almost certainly won’t do this on a regular basis, but it’s a handy option to have. You can export entire conversations - complete with emoji and media attachments - by hitting More inside a chat a selecting Email Chat.

12 useful WhatsApp features you didn’t know existed

Mass-message contacts

You can send the same message to lots of your contacts without lumping them all into one group, much like the BCC option on email, by hitting the New Broadcast option on the app’s main menu.

12 useful WhatsApp features you didn’t know existed

Pin conversations

You pin up to three contacts and groups to the top of your WhatsApp conversation list by tapping and holding a chat, then hitting the pin icon.

12 useful WhatsApp features you didn’t know existed

Make things easier to find

You can easily mark key messages with a star, allowing you to find them easily when you need to. Just tap and hold a message and hit the star icon to save it, and return to it later by selecting Starred Messages in WhatsApp’s main menu.

WhatsApp chief executive officer Chris Daniels met India's IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Tuesday, assuring the government of a solution.

Prasad told reporters he had asked WhatsApp to develop a detailed mechanism to trace the origin of any such "sinister" messages.

"It does not need rocket science to locate a message," Prasad said after his meeting, adding that WhatsApp had said it was working with law enforcement agencies to develop its systems.

A Facebook spokeswoman in India did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

India is WhatsApp's biggest market with more than 200 million users and one where it says people forward more messages, photographs and videos than any other country.

There are also concerns that supporters of political parties could use social media platforms such as WhatsApp to spread false messages in the run-up to India's national elections in 2019.

Following calls from the government to stem the platform's misuse, WhatsApp has moved to deter mass message forwards and launched an advertising campaign to educate consumers.

In July, WhatsApp said message forwards will be limited to five chats at a time, whether among individuals or groups, and said it will remove the quick forward button placed next to media messages.

Additional reporting by Reuters

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