Thousands of WhatsApp users across Britain and Europe were left out of touch as a major outage hit the messaging service.
Problems first emerged with the service, which is used by more than two billion people worldwide, at about 9.30pm on Thursday night (April 28), the Express reported. WhatsApp acknowledged it was having problems and was working to resolve the issue on its Twitter account at 10.17pm.
WhatsApp, owned by Facebook company Meta, posted: "You may be experiencing some issues using WhatsApp at the moment. We’re aware and working to get things running smoothly again. We’ll keep you updated and in the meantime, thanks for your patience."
By 10.30pm, reports of problems were said to be slowing and many users were back online. And at 10.45pm, WhatsApp tweeted: "And we're back. Happy chatting!"
There was no word on what caused the problem on WhatsApp. Down Detector, which monitors web issues across the globe, was showing some 40,000 reports of problems at the height of the outage.
It appeared that users across Europe were suffering from the loss of service, rather than it being localised to one specific region.
Along with reports flooding in on Down Detector, users also went on social media platforms to express their frustration.
On Twitter, one WhatsApp fan named Sarah said: "Jumped to the conclusion that I'd been blocked on WhatsApp before finding out it was down for everyone." Another pointedly noted WhatsApp's claim in its Twitter biog to be "Simple. Secure. Reliable".
Others joked that Tesla billionaire Elon Musk, who has just had a bid for Twitter accepted, should buy the service to improve its operations.
Meanwhile, WhatsApp users are being warned of a new text scam that could leave personal details in the hands of hackers.
The message looks like it's arrived from the WhatsApp Support account but it's actually sent by scammers trying to steal user names, passwords and even bank account details.
It has also been reported that some users are asked for the six-digit verification code sent by WhatsApp to access the account on a new device.
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