The Nation Newspaper

Tag: WhatsApp

  • No spat between Dogara, Saraki – Spokesman

    There is no disagreement, quarrel or misunderstanding between the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Yakubu Dogara and the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, the Special Adviser, Media and Public Affairs to the Speaker, Turaki Hassan has said.

    Dogara’s spokesman  in a statement denying the rumour of a rift between the leaders of the two Chambers said  the public should ignore lies being circulated in the social media especially Whatsapp.

    According to him, Dogara and Saraki have enjoyed cordial relationship in the last three years.

    His words: “Please beware of evil people, merchants of lies, falsehood and mendacity whose primary occupation is to concoct, contrive, fabricate and brew mischief and fake news which they spread and broadcast like wild fire on social media.

    “These paid minions who have sold their conscience and souls to the devil for a morsel have been broadcasting lies on social media especially WhatsApp with the sole aim of deceiving and hoodwinking the public into believing that there is a rift between the two leaders of the National Assembly – Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki and His Excellency Rt. Hon. Yakubu Dogara.

    Read Also: Police deny asking reporter to indict Saraki

    “To the contrary, Dr. Saraki and Barrister Dogara have enjoyed harmonious working relationship in the last three years.”

    He further added: “The Rt. Hon. Speaker will never ever say those things about the President of the Senate.

    “But for the unsuspecting members of the public and supporters of the two leaders, we would have ignored this latest round of fallacious and fictitious perfidy which is nothing but a piece of devilish fiction as it will fizzle out and end in the pit of hell where it came from.”

  • GTBank plans banking services on WhatsApp

    Guaranty Trust Bank plc will be launching its banking services on WhatsApp Business Solution. This will enable the lender to offer Nigerians additional channel to connect with the bank for enquiries, service requests and access to other basic banking services. This is in line with the bank’s continued efforts to enhance service delivery and offer superior banking experiences to customers.

    Over the years, GTBank has been at the forefront of establishing a wide range of value-adding touch-points through which customers can access banking services and interact with the bank on all account-related enquiries at any time of the day.

    The bank was the first financial institution in Nigeria to set up a fully interactive contact center in 2006 and has, since then, led the finance sector in driving customer interaction across online and social media platforms.

    Following the launch of the WhatsApp Business Solution, GTBank is leveraging the platform to bring financial services closer to customers, whilst offering them more channels to bank, make enquiries and have their service requests treated promptly.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • UBA’s Leo launched on WhatsApp

    United Bank for Africa (UBA’s) chat banker, Leo has launched in pilot mode on WhatsApp and will be fully available to customers by September 1, the lender said in a statement.

    With Leo now on WhatsApp, customers who are lovers of the app will be able to open new accounts, check their balances on the go and carry out basic banking services.

    Speaking about the launch of Leo on WhatsApp, Kennedy Uzoka, Group Managing  Director, said: “Our customers are at the heart of our business and we as a bank, are never relenting in matching our words with equal action.  In today’s fast paced world with demands for quick responses, our aim is to make banking seamless and effortless for our millions of existing and potential customers.”

    Also speaking on the launch of Leo on WhatsApp, Group Head of UBA’s Online Banking, Austine Abolusoro, stated ‘United Bank for Africa is a technology-driven institution with vast knowledge in the business that we do and Leo, being a tested dependable and intelligent personality, will replicate on WhatsApp, the success it has experienced on the Facebook Messenger platform.  It is a solution that is from the customer’s standpoint, easy to use by anyone regardless of your demography.’ ‘Leo is ready and waiting to help with any form of banking services’ continued Abolusoro.

    “WhatsApp has been in existence for over 9 years, reaching more than 1.5 billion people in over 180 countries. The premium private chat platform has assured that there will be no spam messages as the development is to enable businesses serve their customers with useful and helpful information.

    Leo who is already present in over 12 African subsidiaries, including Nigeria, and available in  three languages, will be fully rolled out to customers on WhatsApp in September 2018 with all its regular features and extended attributes for WhatsApp.

  • WhatsApp introduces new feature to curb fake news

    WhatsApp has announced the launch of a new feature globally that will highlight when a message has been forwarded and not composed by the sender.

    The messaging application made the move public on Tuesday through its official blog following calls from various parts of the world, including India, to tackle the spread of fake news.

    In the statement, the platform, owned by Facebook, said, “Starting today, WhatsApp will indicate which messages you receive, have been forwarded to you.

    “This extra context will help make one-on-one and group chats easier to follow,” WhatsApp said in a blog.

    “It also helps you determine if your friend or relative wrote the message they sent or if it originally came from someone else.

    “To see this new forwarded label, you need to have the latest supported version of WhatsApp on your phone,” WhatsApp added.

    Recently, while replying a notice by the Indian government to take immediate measures to prevent misuse of its platform, WhatsApp had said that it was testing a new label that highlights when a message has been forwarded.

    Read Also: WhatsApp introduces mute, unread option

    “This could serve as an important signal for recipients to think twice before forwarding messages.

    “Because it lets a user know if content they received was written by the person they know or a potential rumour from someone else,” it had said.

    In its blog, the instant messaging application added, “WhatsApp cares deeply about your safety.

    “We encourage you to think before sharing messages that were forwarded. As a reminder, you can report spam or block a contact in one tap and can always reach out to WhatsApp directly for help.”

    The company had last month also announced “unrestricted monetary awards” for research on spread of misinformation on its platform to address the problem.

  • Facebook investigates temporary outage of WhatsApp messenger

    Facebook investigates temporary outage of WhatsApp messenger

    Facebook Inc’s WhatsApp messenger suffered a temporary outage in India and many other countries, according to reports from multiple users on Facebook and Twitter on Friday.

    Users in countries ranging from Brazil and Russia to Vietnam and Myanmar reported on social media that it was down in their countries.

    The extent of the outage and the reasons for it were not immediately known.

    ‘Whatsappdown’ was the top trending item on Twitter in India, which is WhatsApp’s biggest market with about 200 million of its billion-plus users.

    It was also a top trending item on Twitter in Pakistan, Britain, Germany and many other countries.

    Users reported WhatsApp, the world’s most popular messaging service, had begun to gradually function again about 30 minutes after initial complaints of an outage appeared on social media.

    Users in Malaysia and Singapore also complained of WhatsApp being down in those countries.

    A spokeswoman for Facebook in Singapore said the company was still investigating the matter.

    Independent websites monitoring outages of popular social media services via online conversations and Twitter messages report regular outages for WhatsApp, often one every few weeks, but these are typically brief and confined to certain geographies.

    WhatsApp has faced similar widespread outages this year, including for several hours in May.

    WhatsApp is used by more than 1.2 billion people around the world and is a key tool for communications and commerce in many countries.

    The service was acquired by Facebook in 2014 for 19 billion dollars.

    NAN

  • WhatsApp co-founder to leave company

    WhatsApp co-founder to leave company

     Brian Acton, co-founder of WhatsApp, now owned by Facebook Inc (FB.O), will leave the messaging service company to start a new foundation, he said in a Facebook posto, Media reports on Wednesday.

    Acton spent eight years with WhatsApp, which Facebook bought in 2014 for $19 billion in cash and stock.

    A Stanford alumnus, Acton co-founded WhatsApp with Ukrainian nimmigrant Jan Koum in 2009.

    The duo worked at Yahoo before starting WhatsApp.

  • EU fines Facebook 110m euros over misleading WhatsApp data

    EU fines Facebook 110m euros over misleading WhatsApp data

    European Union antitrust regulators on Thursday said they would fine Facebook 110 million euros (122.4 million dollars) for providing misleading information over its purchase of messaging service WhatsApp in 2014.

    Calling it a “proportionate and deterrent fine,” the European Commission, which acts as the EU’s competition watchdog, said Facebook had said it could not automatically match user accounts on its namesake platform and WhatsApp but two years later launched a service that did exactly that.

    “The Commission has found that, contrary to Facebook’s statements in the 2014 merger review process, the technical possibility of automatically matching Facebook and WhatsApp users’ identities already existed in 2014, and that Facebook staff were aware of such a possibility,” the Commission said.

    The commission added that the fine would not reverse the Commission’s decision to clear the purchase of WhatsApp and was unrelated to separate investigations into data protection issues.

    Reuters reported on Wednesday that Facebook was set to be fined.

  • WhatsApp to drop support for BlackBerry, older Android phones

    WhatsApp to drop support for BlackBerry, older Android phones

    Instant messaging service WhatsApp has announced plan to end support for a number of older mobile operating systems by the end of 2016.

    It said that it would affect all Blackberry OS devices including Blackberry 10, Nokia’s S40 and Symbian S60, Android 2.1 (Éclair) and 2.2 (Froyo), as well as Windows Phone 7.1.

    The company added that users of these platforms would no longer be able to use the popular messaging app unless they switch to newer systems by the end of the year.

    However, later versions of Android, including 2.3 (Gingerbread) or higher, will still be capable of sending WhatsApp messages.

    The company cited technical development limitations with regard to these legacy platforms as the reason for its decision.

    Some so-called feature phones, low-end handsets featuring some basic multimedia and internet capabilities, still run Nokia’s S40 and S60 operating systems, but have become largely unfashionable with the rise of Smartphones.

    “Windows Phone 7 has already been replaced by Windows Phone 8 and, more recently, by Windows 10 Mobile.

    “The Android versions Eclair and Froyo, with their numerous vulnerabilities that are no longer being fixed, are also considered to be outdated.

    “BlackBerry has switched gears by opting for Android instead of its own BlackBerry 10 for its new smartphone Priv.

    “In future, the development of WhatsApp is to focus on newer versions of Android, iOS and Windows, which are now used by the vast majority of users,’’ the company says.

    Meanwhile the messenger was launched in 2009, more than 70 per cent of Smartphones still ran Nokia and BlackBerry operating systems.

    The company said as of today, dogs Android and iOS accounted for less than 25 per cent of the mobile devices sold.

  • Brazil WhatsApp suspension lifted

    A judge in Brazil has ordered that a suspension of the popular messaging application WhatsApp be lifted.

    Judge Xavier de Souza said the service should be re-instated immediately, the BBC Reports.

    In the ruling, the court found that it was unreasonable to cut off access to the app for tens of millions of people because the company failed to comply with a court order.

    Earlier, Facebook chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, called it a “sad day for Brazil” after a judge there ordered a two-day shutdown of the messaging service, which is owned by Facebook.

    The app, used by as many as 100 million people in the country, was previously ordered to be suspended by a state judge who said the company refused to comply with a criminal investigation.

    According to reports, Brazilian telecom companies received orders at midnight to shut down the voice and messaging service, after the company failed to comply with orders from the judge from July and August. The case is under seal.

    “Until today, Brazil has been an ally in creating an open internet. Brazilians have always been among the most passionate in sharing their voice online,” Zuckerberg said in a statement, urging a reversal.

    “I am stunned that our efforts to protect people’s data would result in such an extreme decision by a single judge to punish every person in Brazil who uses WhatsApp,” he said.

    Brazil has usually placed high in rankings of Internet freedom around the globe.

  • WhatsApp introduces mute, unread option

    WhatsApp introduces mute, unread option



    [dropcap color=”#319e4f”]E[/dropcap]ver got tired of WhatsApp messages from friends especially while workload is much or late at night when the only sure thing is sleep, good news is that the instant messaging application now has provision to help handle that.

    The Android application PacKage (APK) has had a very fruitful and active day going through no less than 5 updates in the span of 24 hours. The app’s developers introduced a series of new options and seem to be fixing bugs with successive iterative updates from v2.12.189 to the most recent v2.12.194.

    According to an APK website, Android Police, the most significant change in this series of updates is the new custom notifications settings. When you open a contact’s or group’s details page, you’ll see a new Notifications box below the Media one.

    In it is the option to mute the chat for 8 hours, 1 week, or 1 year, as well as extensive custom notifications. These let you pick a specific tone, vibration length, light, popup notification, as well as the call ringtone and vibration.

    Another addition to the app is the ‘Mark As Unread’ feature. Tap and hold on any conversation and you’ll be able to mark it as unread, which switches its status to green but doesn’t affect the read messages status inside the chat or its chronological rank among your conversations.

    The significance of such is that it could serve as a visual reminder when you want to get back to someone later.

    And finally there are two new changes in the app’s settings. First is a Low data usage option for voice calls, useful when you’re on a limited or slow data plan. Second is a small hint to Google Drive backups.

    Under Account, Network usage, you’ll see Google Drive backup usage tallied along with the app’s media, messages, and calls. There’s still no way to trigger a Google Drive backup — the option was added several months ago then removed — so this could be a sign that Drive backups may be coming again soon or that someone on the developer team forgot to clear out these options before publishing this apk.

    One interesting thing about WhatsApp is that every couple of weeks, the team surprises its users with new features, and keeps on refining them and improving the app’s functionality.