WhatsApp down reported across the world as thousands complain of privacy settings and last seen online glitch
A flurry of WhatsApp down reports have complained about issues with the last seen online status bar as well as connection problems. Down Detector, an independent outage monitor, has observed a massive spike in WhatsApp down reports as of Friday morning. At the time of writing, the website had already registered a peak of more than 4,000 WhatsApp down reports.
73 percent of those affected are reportedly having problems with the last seen feature in the instant messaging platform. Meanwhile, 24 percent have reported connection issues. According to the outage map on Down Detector, WhatsApp issues have mostly been reported in the UK, Europe, and the US.
Several users of the chat app took to Twitter to voice their issues, complaining about how they weren't able to change their last seen privacy settings in the app. "Has anyone else’s ‘last seen’ on WhatsApp been automatically turned off and can’t turn it back on?!" one asked.
"Does anyone know what's going on with #whatsapp? 'Last seen' suddenly says nobody and I haven't changed it," another posted. "Why would Whatsapp remove last seen, online and typing feature," a third chimed in.
"Am I the only one who's not complaining about this? It's great, I don't have to read messages from the notification and reply to everyone!! #whatsappdown," a fourth added. That said, the majority of WhatsApp users are still able to communicate via the app while the problem persists for others.
If the last seen status is unable to be viewed on WhatsApp, it means typing and online statuses are also not showing. Meanwhile, Down Detector has also listed other regions where the issue is being faced, including Mexico, India, Singapore, and a lot of other places.
According to reports, such a glitch usually occurs when there is some error on the server-side and not on the client-side application. Ever since the outage, the Facebook-owned instant messaging giant has been bombarded with complaints online and is currently working on a fix. If you are facing a similar problem, you should be able to change settings soon.
Earlier this week, Whatsapp launched a long-awaited feature on its popular app -- rolling out the highly anticipated payments feature. However, the service is currently only available for users in Brazil.
"We have built payments with security in mind and a special six-digit PIN or fingerprint will be required to prevent unauthorized transactions," the Facebook-owned app announced in a blog post. "To start, we will support debit or credit cards from Banco do Brasil, Nubank, and Sicredi on the Visa and Mastercard networks -and we are working with Cielo, the leading payments processor in Brazil. We have built an open model to welcome more partners in the future."
"Sending money or making a purchase on WhatsApp is free for people," the post continued. "Businesses will pay a processing fee to receive customer payments, similar to what they may already pay when accepting a credit card transaction."
"Payments on WhatsApp are beginning to roll out to people across Brazil beginning today and we look forward to bringing it to everyone as we go forward," it added.