“Join this group and invite all your friends,” is a message that children and young people are increasingly seeing on WhatsApp when joining new groups. These can be hubs for illegal content and can be dangerous, says Kira Liebmann, a family coach in Germany advising parents on how they can protect children from threats online. […]
LONDON (AP) — A British police officer pleaded guilty Thursday to terror charges for showing support on social media for Hamas, which is designated a terror group and banned in the U.K. West Yorkshire constable Mohammed Adil admitted sharing two images on WhatsApp supporting the group three weeks after Hamas and other Palestinian militants stormed […]
LONDON (AP) — A British police officer is facing terror charges for showing support for Hamas on WhatsApp, a police watchdog said Wednesday. West Yorkshire constable Mohammed Adil shared images supporting Hamas, which is banned and designated a terror group in the U.K., the Independent Office for Police Conduct said. Adil faces two counts of […]
The mother of one of the Nottingham attack victims has written an open letter to members of a police WhatsApp group in which a message was posted describing her son as being “properly butchered”. Emma Webber, the mother of Barnaby Webber (19), who with Grace O’Malley-Kumar (19) and school caretaker Ian Coates (65) was stabbed […]
WhatsApp was down for thousands of users on Wednesday, even as the smartphone messaging app resumed service for some people, according to outage tracking website Downdetector.com. Around 3,200 people were also facing issues with Instagram in the United States, per Downdetector, which tracks outages by collating status reports from a number of sources including user-submitted […]
WhatsApp has lowered the minimum age for those who can use the messaging service from 16 to 13. The reduction is part of new terms and conditions which took effect on Friday, and brings WhatsApp into line with other social media platforms, including TikTok, Instagram and Facebook, all of which have a minimum users age […]
Former Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon is facing calls to make a personal statement to Holyrood after it was confirmed she failed to transfer any WhatsApp messages from during the Covid pandemic on to her government’s corporate record. The Scottish government confirmed “zero” WhatsApp messages were transferred to the electronic records and document management (eRDM) […]
LONDON (AP) — A former leader of Scotland acknowledged on Wednesday that she deleted WhatsApp messages sent during the COVID-19 pandemic, but she insisted that anything of relevance to how policymaking was conducted had been made available for the public record. Nicola Sturgeon told the United Kingdom’s public inquiry into the pandemic that she didn’t […]
MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — Somalia’s National Intelligence and Security Agency said Tuesday it has for the first time managed to shut down 20 WhatsApp groups allegedly operated by the extremist group al-Shabab for extortion and intimidation. NISA in a statement said its cyber division had identified what it described as the virtual hubs for illicit […]
The former first minister of Scotland has said the UK Covid Inquiry “does have messages” between her and those she communicated with during the pandemic. Nicola Sturgeon says she will “answer questions directly and openly” when she gives evidence to the inquiry at the end of January. It comes after the UK Covid Inquiry heard […]
Nicola Sturgeon has deleted all of her WhatsApp messages sent and received during the pandemic, the Covid Inquiry has heard. The former Scottish first minister has previously said she never used informal messaging to make decisions during the pandemic, but has been criticised for what opposition politicians consider an attempt to hide exchanges with key […]