WhatsApp ALERT – Great new feature has this one big flaw you NEED to know about

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WhatsApp users have been warned a great new feature for the chat app has one loophole

fans have been warned about a flaw in the chat app’s recently added delete message feature.

WhatsApp is used by more than 1.3billion people around the world each month, and is one of the most popular smartphone apps around.

On New Year’s Eve WhatsApp broke its record for the most amount of messages sent in one day, with 75billion messages sent on NYE 2017.

The staggering stats underline the huge amount of people that use WhatsApp each and every day.

And now fans of the Facebook-owned service have been put on alert about a loophole found in one of the chat app’s new features.

Last October WhatsApp rolled out it’s long-awaited ‘Delete for Everyone’ feature.

The new addition to the iOS and Android chat app let users delete sent messages.

So, people who had sent an embarrassing message by accident could at last remove it from a conversation.

However, there was one big catch – WhatsApp users could only delete messages within seven minutes of sending it.

To be able to use the WhatsApp delete sent messages feature, the sender and the recipient also both had to be using the latest version of WhatsApp.

Describing the feature, the WhatsApp team said: “Deleting messages for everyone allows you to delete specific messages you have sent to either a group or an individual chat. 

“This is particularly useful if you sent a message to the wrong chat or if the message you sent contains a mistake.

“Messages you successfully delete for everyone will be replaced with “This message was deleted” in your recipients’ chats. 

“Similarly, if you see ‘This message was deleted’ in a chat, it means that the sender deleted their message for everyone.”

However, it’s now been discovered that the WhatsApp delete message feature has one loophole.

The Next Web reported that a deleted message from WhatsApp continues to appear in a conversation if it has been quoted.

The tech website said: “We noticed that quoted messages in group chats continue to show in quotes even after they have been wiped. 

“Attempting the same thing in a private chat bred the exact same results.”

Screenshots the site posted show how the loophole works.

WhatsAppEXPRESS NEWSPAPERS

WhatsApp’s delete message feature has a loophole when a post is quoted

The initial message can be successfully deleted, however the contents of the message still appears in a quoted post.

Express.co.uk also tested this out with the latest version of WhatsApp, and the same loophole occurred.

The test message we sent was successfully deleted from a conversation, but the contents of it still appeared in a quoted post.

Express.co.uk has contacted WhatsApp for comment.

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WhatsApp introduced the ‘Delete for Everyone’ feature last October

The news comes after Express.co.uk revealed last month about a WhatsApp security flaw that could let hackers spy on conversations.

Researchers from Germany’s Ruhr University Bochum unearthed the risk, claiming it can let hackers spy on group chats in WhatsApp.

The experts said anyone that control WhatsApp servers could insert new people  into an otherwise private group chat.

They could do this without the permission of administrators who controls access to that conversation.

Speaking to Wired, Paul Rösler – one of the Ruhr University researchers – said: “The confidentiality of the group is broken as soon as the uninvited member can obtain all the new messages and read them.

“If I hear there’s end-to-end encryption for both groups and two-party communications, that means adding of new members should be protected against. 

“And if not, the value of encryption is very little.”

Since people can only be added to WhatsApp groups without permission once servers are accessed, that limits the amount of parties who can eavesdrop.

Wired said sophisticated hackers, WhatsApp staffers and governments who legally demand access would be able to take control of WhatsApp servers.

Once someone has infiltrated a conversation, everyone in the chat automatically shares a secret key with that user.

That means they have access to all future messages, but cannot view past ones.

A WhatsApp spokesperson confirmed the researchers’ finding to Wired, but said no one can secretly add a new member to a group conversation.

This is because a notification goes through when a new, unknown member has joined the group.