Tag Archives: WhatsApp

News

#JomJagaPrivasi with Meta’s Privacy Cafe

October 31, 2022 Nur Jeevan Leave a comment

The world is quickly changing. In many ways, the landscape of social media and how we are online has changed drastically since social media became a mainstay. More of us are concerned with our data and how companies are handling it. We have become ever more critical of our own privacy when we are online. One of the largest social media companies we deal with on a regular basis has to be Meta. With over 3.7 billion people engaging with Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus and Facebook, it’s become even more imperative that users are aware of the steps to protect their privacy and data.

Privacy Cafe – Sit, Eat and Explore Privacy and Data Protection

To that end, Meta kicked off the week-long campaign with a unique “Privacy Cafe” where users of their many platforms could learn the many tools available to them to protect their privacy and data. The event which took place from 28th to 30 October at The Farm Craft in Bangsar South, saw the neighbourhood cage undergo a top to toe transformation into Meta’s Privacy Cafe. The cafe featured interactive quizzes and AR-enabled activities that not only educated the public about the tools but encouraged them to activate and take control of their online privacy.

The Privacy Cafe featured an immersive Instagram AR Filter developed in collaboration with Florian Sebatier and an interactive digital experience called “Your Home”. “Your Home” allowed users to become interior decorators and create a home experience that they were comfortable with. The furnishings in the “Your Home” experience were analogues for the many controls available on Facebook and worked to demystify the whole concept of online privacy and data protection.

Of course, to help convey the message, Meta also recruited the help of local social media stars like Ceddy Ang, Tan Yuki, Gajendrabalan Chandra, Adam
Muzam, Ori Yuanwei, Amira Sachie and Jessica Chaw to help share and relate their experiences with privacy on Meta’s platforms.

Continuing the Conversation Online

In addition to the on-ground event, Meta Malaysia also had Facebook live sessions where they had open discussions with the public about their privacy tools and controls across Instagram, Facebook and Whatsapp. With the increasing awareness about privacy and data protection in Malaysia, Meta is looking to be one of the places where users can safely interact and be social online.

They’ve also put together a Privacy Fact Sheet with all their efforts including end-to-end encryption on all their platforms, Two-factor authentication and increased accountability for third party apps accessing accounts on their platforms.

While the onground activation is over, Meta is looking to continue the conversation online. They continue to make the “Your Home” and Instagram AR experiences accessible online for users to get to know the controls and safety measures that are available to them.

Meta-Malaysia-Privacy-Fact-Sheet Download

Mobile, News

It’s Not Just You… WhatsApp is Down Again

October 25, 2022 Nur Jeevan Leave a comment

UPDATE (5:04PM 25/10/2022): It looks like WhatsApp is slowly coming online for users. However, Meta has not yet released any details on the outage.

If you’ve been trying to access WhatsApp web or send a message over the app and having issues, you’re not alone. It looks like thousands of users around the globe are experiencing yet another outage of the popular messaging app. This seems to be a recurring issue with the app having at least two outages this year alone.

While there has been little information shared about the outage this time, it looks like Meta is well aware of it. The company has issued an official acknowledgement of the incident but hasn’t shared any details. In the statement from a Meta spokesperson, the company states, “We’re aware that some people are currently having trouble sending messages and we’re working to restore WhatsApp for everyone as quickly as possible.”. It’s worth noting that the official WhatsApp Twitter account has yet to release anything on the outage.

The issue was initially reported at about 3 pm Malaysian time with a sharp increase in reports on downdetector. The problem doesn’t seem to be isolated and has affected multiple countries across the globe including Malaysia, France and India. It’s worth noting that WhatsApp is one of the widest-used messaging apps in Malaysia and the Southeast Asian region. The outage is definitely going to be disruptive.

Business, Lifestyle, Mobile, News

Malaysia Gets to Try WhatsApp Communities First

August 24, 2022 Darwin Sucipto Leave a comment

A few months back WhatsApp announced that they were launching a new major feature that could make the platform a powerful one for organisations and communities It is also fittingly called Communities. WhatsApp made the announcement back in April 2022 and teased it as a “coming soon” feature. Months later, Communities might finally be a reality. As with any other major features platform providers want to release, they have to go through their testing phase first, WhatsApp included.

While it may seem odd, WhatsApp is one of the most popular, if not the most popular, communication platform in Malaysia. While other countries still rely on the regular messaging app, WhatsApp is a mainstay in Malaysia and is the preferred communication tool of the nation. It is not just personal communication that relies on WhatsApp in Malaysia, companies and organisations rely on WhatsApp Groups to get messages across, essential team communications, and even announcements going.

The reliance and usage patterns for the platform in Malaysia makes it the perfect test bench and sample pool for WhatsApp communities.

Press Note Malaysia gets early access to WhatsApp Communities 2 — Source: WhatsApp

As per the announcement back in April, Communities will be a powerful tool for administrators looking to run multiple groups in their organisations. It allows an admin to include and exclude groups in a single Community group. At that, it also allows admins to start smaller and more controlled conversation groups within the community itself with select members. Communities allows admins to send a community wide announcement if the need arises. At the same time, only the admin has the power to invite members into the community and its groups, also to remove members when they deem necessary.

There are other features that are being added as well with WhatsApp Communities. To be fair, these are improvements done for WhatsApp Groups. Some of the improvements have been introduced before Communities in preparation for the arrival of the new feature too. Reaction, for example, was introduced so users can quickly react to messages via emoji without flooding group chats with new messages and drown the messages out. Group admins can also remove messages from chats for everyone in the group, if they deem it to be problematic. File sharing limit has been pushed to 2GB for more versatile collaboration efforts. Voice calls can now include up to 32 users while you can now mute other people in the call just to ensure that discussions and presentations can go on without distractions. WhatsApp Groups has also increased its member limit from 256 members to up to 512 members. If you wish to leave groups, you can now do it silently, only notifying group admins.

Currently, WhastApp’s Communities is being tested by Gabungan Anak-Anak Palsi Serebum (GAPS) community and Entrepreneurs and Startups in Malaysia communities. It is rolling out to select users in Malaysia currently. It will eventually be available for all WhatsApp users in Malaysia. For the latest updates on WhatsApp and its features you can visit their blog.

Computers, Lifestyle, Mobile, News

WhatsApp Has a Native Windows App, Finally

August 17, 2022 Darwin Sucipto Leave a comment

No, this is not technically breaking news. In some sense, WhatsApp on PCs is not a new thing as well. The app has a Windows app for a while now. It is technically an incarnation of WhatsApp Web, but without reliance on web interfaces, to a certain degree.

The thing is, when you sign into your Desktop version of the app before this, you are not really signed into WhatsApp Desktop. Rather, you are signed into a web-based version of the app. Which also means that the desktop app is a lie. Well, they did not do anything to mask that WhatsApp Desktop is nothing more than web-based interface that opens on a separate window.

The new update to the Windows version of WhatsApp Desktop is a little different though. At first glance, they changed on the visuals a little. There are more green accents on the interface. Thy interface also looks somewhat a lot more streamlined than before, less clunky. You also see a video call and phone button now, which means you can make calls from your PC now, instead of your smartphone. Then you turn to your smartphone and instead of “Google Chrome” or “Microsoft Edge” listed on your linked devices, it is now “Windows”.

This is all a part of WhatsApp making their interface native to Windows. Other than a few visual differences, there are also added a few capabilities to the app.

While you might not notice it too much, WhatsApp being made native to Windows does have a performance boost. It should now load faster, work faster, and is a lot more stable than before. Other than the optimization you get on WhatsApp for Windows, you can also now receive messages and notifications even when your smartphone is offline. It is not completely reliant on your smartphone anymore. Of course, now you can make video calls and phone calls via the app on Windows PC.

WhatsApp for Windows is now live on the Microsoft Store. If you have WhatsApp Desktop already installed on your machine, you simply need to update it via Microsoft Store. The Desktop App is currently limited to Windows. They are working on a working version for Mac currently which also means that it should be available to Mac users soon.

Android, iOS, Mobile, News

Move to iPhone They Said, WhatsApp Can Moved There They Said – Wait, What?

July 21, 2022 Darwin Sucipto Leave a comment

For the longest time, one of the biggest problems when it comes to moving from one smartphone platform to the other is data transfers and backup. To be fair, when you change from one Android manufacturer to the other, transferring your data can be as easy as setting up a Wi-Fi Direct connection with your older device today. It is a slightly different story when you shift from Android to an iPhone platform though. You tend to have to accept that most of your data will be gone and you must start building your own ecosystem from scratch. One of those databases that might be important to you is your messenger data, specifically WhatsApp.

WhatsApp is one of the only messengers currently active within both the Android and iOS ecosystem that relies on storing data locally. While that is better in terms of security, privacy, and encryption, it makes life a little difficult when you want to transfer your data between devices. For Android devices, WhatsApp can work with Google’s Drive platform to offer data backup and restoration. In iOS devices, WhatsApp relies on Apple’s iCloud service, which is a completely different platform entirely that has nothing to do with Google’s Drive cloud storage platform. That creates a problem when you shift from Android devices to iOS devices and vice versa.

Luckily, WhatsApp knows that this is a problem and has been working hard to rectify the issue, just so that users have more options in terms of choosing their next devices. Now, they have found a sort of solution. We say sort of because it currently only works one way and not the other.

WhatsApp has released an additional app that is available for free on the Google Play Store to make this shift happen. They call it the ‘Move to iOS’ app, which may be rather unoriginal, but straightforward. There are a few requirements to transferring your WhatsApp data from your old Android to your new iPhone though.

First, you need at least Android 5 installed on your device, which should not be too hard if you own a smartphone within the last 5 years. Second, you want to ensure that your new iPhone device packs iOS 15.5 and above, which also should not be too difficult if you go for the latest iPhone devices anyway. Of course, you need to install Move to iOS app as well on your Android device. WhatsApp must be updated too for this to work. You need at least WhatsApp version 2.22.7.74 for your Android device and WhatsApp version 2.22.10.70 for your iPhone. The iPhone device must also be a fresh unit or factory reset unit to pair with the Android app. Then you must ensure that both devices are being plugged in and charged, for some reason. Both devices need to be connected to the same Wi-Fi umbrella, or the Android device must be connected to the receiving iPhone’s hotspot. Of course, the phone number used must be the same.

Once you tick all those boxes, you want to head to the Move to iOS app on your donor Android device and start the process. The process itself is rather straightforward and easy to follow. Once you get on your iPhone, you simply have to log into WhatsApp with your attached phone number and sign in to the messages and other medias waiting for you.

There are no cloud backups, uploads, or download process in this process. Everything is done through Wi-Fi Direct to your iPhone. There is technically no way to monitor the data transfer progress via WhatsApp as well currently. At the same time, like with any WhatsApp transfer, your data is not moved to the new device, it is merely copied. So, if you sign into your Android device after the transfer, you will still have everything in place. There is also a few things you cannot transfer from the Android to the iPhone; namely your personal messages, and peer to peer payment messages (Not like this works in Malaysia currently anyway).

Like we said, the migration is a one-way street currently. There is no easy way for you to transfer your WhatsApp messages and data from the iPhone to an Android device currently. Obviously, transferring WhatsApp data from an iOS to Android devices can be a little complex given the various Android devices you get from differing manufacturers with different standards of complexity as well. If WhatsApp can be transferred from an Android to iOS though, you can expect the reverse to come soon.

Lifestyle, Mobile, News

WhatsApp Now Allows You to Hide from Select Contacts and Mute Users in Group Calls

June 20, 2022 Darwin Sucipto Leave a comment

WhatsApp last week rolled out a new update to their app. No, they have not added the Communities functions yet. They are still testing the feature and they tell us that they are getting ready to launch it soon.

The update we are referring to last week is mostly an update to their privacy feature and a few other functions. One of the newer things they have finally added to give you more control over your own privacy is the ability to limit the information you share with the people you choose to share or not share them with. You can now block specific contacts from viewing your WhatsApp profile photos and statuses.

While this is a new feature to WhatsApp, Telegram users are already quite familiar with the function. In Addition to that, Telegram now also do not require users to register a phone number to be attached to the messenger account. WhatsApp still requires you to attach a phone number to your messenger account, which might not change for a while.

There is more that WhatsApp has updated. While group calls have been a thing for a long time on WhatsApp, the more granular control to group admins has not been a feature. Users must be responsible for their own call controls. While this may not be a bad thing in regular social calls, users who wants to use WhatsApp as their main instrument in corporate calls might find it annoying.

To address that, WhatsApp now allows hosts of group calls to mute other users. It could help a lot in muting users who might have forgotten to mute themselves in the call. Either that or if you do not want to listen to that person at all.

Muting people in a smaller group call could be easy but monitoring a large group (up to 32 participants) can be rather difficult. Since you can only rely on the small screens of your smartphones, there is also a limit to how many people can fit in your display. WhatsApp is making the interface much easier to work with though for larger group calls. The indicator not only helps you monitor large group calls but also alert you of late joiners to the call.

WhatsApp is looking to transform itself from being a simple messenger service to something that users can even rely on in a corporate setting. They announced the Communities feature a few months ago and that is still on track to becoming available to every WhatsApp user by the end of the year. It is now also a video calling and audio calling tool for its users as long as they get data or internet. Even with the backlash that was their privacy policy update last year, WhatsApp is still one of the most popular mobile messenger services we have come across and is still the messenger of choice by many Malaysians. The announcements made today are mentioned on WhatsApp’s Twitter account.

Business, Lifestyle, Mobile, News

WhatsApp Announces Communities! It is Like Groups, but Much Bigger.

April 15, 2022 Darwin Sucipto Leave a comment

WhatsApp is an integral part of our lives today. In most parts of Asia, WhatsApp has become an essential communication tool which has replaced the traditional messaging apps. iMessage in this part of the world has nothing against the likes of WhatsApp and the likes of the messaging app.

We rely on WhatsApp not just for communicating and chatting with our friends. We rely on the platform at work as well. The amount of group chats we have just for work can be quite unreal.

WhatsApp recognises the need for their platform, especially in the world we live in today. They also recognise the need for their platform to become something even more than just a way to text your other half that you are buying dinner. So, they introduced Communities.

What is Communities? It is very much like WhatsApp groups really, except that it is also not. It is a platform for organisations to organise on. It is a platform for managing groups from a single place on WhatsApp.

278344019 2101086136707982 3915804386405476625 n — Source: WhatsApp

You can think of Communities as a sort of Forum for any organisation that you are a part of. There can be different conversations that happen in that forum (chat groups). You can also address the entire forum with a single message when you need to. It is like being a part of a larger conversation and have smaller side discussions without interrupting the larger group.

For the Admin of their communities, they get even more powerful tools to work with. You can make announcements to the entire community and address everyone from every smaller group whenever you want. If you only need the message to be spread across several select groups, you can do that too. Admins can even control the things that are being shared in each group if they find it inappropriate, much like forum moderators.

The example that WhatsApp gave in their announcement is of that of a school and the principal running the show. Communities can be much more than that though. It could be a collective of multiple charity efforts, an enthusiast community organising several events, even a company having separate departments as chat groups and project work groups.

277743565 1146893889477410 4256662175003331358 n — Source: WhatsApp

With Communities, there are also several updates that is brought about the make WhatsApp even more powerful. Audio calls can now include up to 32 people. You can react to messages from your friends in groups too. At the same time, file sharing has been upped to 2 GB at a time, which is a blessing in the creative industry, or when you are trying to share full resolution images. Admin delete will also be introduced in regular group chats.

WhatsApp Communities is not available just yet. It is coming soon, according to WhatsApp. The feature updates that will be attached to Communities will be introduced to WhatsApp before the Communities update though. That also means you might get to try out some of the new features soon to get yourself ready for the Communities update. You can find out more about WhatsApp Communities from their announcement.

Mobile, News, Social Media

Send Even Bigger Files with Future WhatsApp!

March 28, 2022 Darwin Sucipto Leave a comment

WhtasApp’s beta is now available for iOS 15! While that is news, it is not the one we are excited about. Sure, it is important that WhatsApp explore and test their app on every available platform as soon as they are available. But new WhatsApp beta builds always come with new features we are likely to see in the coming updates for regular WhatsApp users.

The update is iOS beta version 22.7.0.76. The update introduced to be compatible with iOS 15 brings about quite a significant step forward in the functionality that is file sharing on WhatsApp. It bumped up the 100MB limit that used to be the staple for WhatsApp. It is important, especially when you need to be sharing large format media files like videos to your colleagues, or friends, or clients without the clutter and slowness of emails, or simply uploading to a cloud storage only to share a link after. They did not bump up the 100MB limit to 150MB, not just 1GB too. They have bumped up the file sending capacity to 2GB.

WA NEW MEDIA FILE SHARING LIMIT IOS — Source: WhatsApp Beta Info

While WhatsApp tends to compress your images and videos, you currently can send uncompressed image files within WhatsApp. It is a small turnaround, but it is possible. But the current release of WhatsApp will still limit your file sharing size to 100MB. You can send most photos, AAC and FLAC audio files. You will not be able to share high resolution videos, or WAV files in most cases, important in certain professional environments.

2GB is basically a 2000% jump from the current limit. For us at least, 2GB could allow us to get our finished videos out to our clients via WhatsApp immediately instead of slow emails. It improves our workflow alongside the clients.

The test is currently only available to iOS and certain Android users in Argentina. It is just a test though, so we can only take it with a pinch of salt. Only time will tell if we are going to be able to share larger format files via WhatsApp for now. We are hopeful though, since WhatsApp is one of the main communication platforms we heavily rely on in Malaysia.

Source: WhatsApp Beta Info

Mobile, News

Coming Soon, Maybe: Deleting that Three-Month Old Mistake on WhatsApp

November 3, 2021 Darwin Sucipto Leave a comment

WhatsApp is full of wonders. It is, despite the whole Facebook Privacy Policy debacle earlier this year, the most popular alternative messaging app we have seen. No manufacturer has ever seen this kind of success with their own messaging platform. This includes BlackBerry in their hey day mind you.

Being on top is not all sunshine and roses though. To stay on top, as they say, you have to keep pushing boundaries. WhatsApp, of course is constantly improving and adding new features to their app to keep users happy and excited at least. The most recent possible update to WhatsApp in the future? Deleting messages.

Yes, deleting messages used to be something you cannot do with WhatsApp. Before you say we are outdated, hear us out. We know that it is now a thing on WhatsApp. At this point of time, you can delete messages that are no older than an hour and eight minutes. At its early days, WhatsApp only allow you to delete fresh messages no older than seven minutes.

WA DELETE MESSAGE EVERYONE V2 ANDROID — Source: WABetaInfo

Recently though, WABetaInfo has spotted a new feature on the latest beta version of WhatsApp. The latest beta 2.21.220.15 for iOS as per available to WABetaInfo allows users to delete messages not two hours older, not even just a day older. It now allows you to delete messages that are three months old.

WABetaInfo speculates that the new update might point to one of two things. Either WhatsApp is looking to extend the time limit on their delete messages feature or remove the time limit completely. They are also speculating that the update may open up even more avenues to deleting messages even before the feature was introduced.

While all these are under development and that should be cause enough for excitement, there are no official word from Meta (formerly known as Facebook) and WhatsApp themselves just yet. The features in development remain as a potential feature to the app and not an actual feature until it is launched in any of WhatsApp many updates. In that sense, nobody knows when all these developments will become a feature, only time can tell.

techENT