WhatsApp services restored after nearly 2 hours, IT ministry seeks report from Meta

First Published Oct 25, 2022, 1:07 PM IST | Last Updated Oct 25, 2022, 2:21 PM IST

WhatsApp services were restored after being down since two hours on Tuesday. According to reports, the outage first hit WhatsApp's group messaging and then expanded into direct messaging. India's information and technology ministry has sought a report from Meta -- WhatsApp's parent company -- to understand what caused the outage.

Meta acknowledged the outage. In a statement, Meta said it is aware that some people have not been able to send messages and that it is working to restore the messaging app. We are looking to restore the services as soon as possible, the statement added. Services were restored nearly two hours later.

Earlier, the Down Detector website reported over 50,000 complaints of WhatsApp service disruption. Users complained of not being able to send or receive messages on the messaging app. According to WhatsApp, 5.5 billion unencrypted SMS are sent daily via the platform. Even the WhatsApp Web service -- the message service for desktops -- is also not working.

The WhatsApp disruption saw Twitter getting flooded with memes by WhatsApp users. In fact, the hashtag -- WhatsApp Down -- is the top trend on Twitter. Check out some of them here

According to experts, outages are generally fixed in about 15-20 minutes. Considering that WhatsApp's services were down for nearly two hours, experts believe that the platform may have suffered a cyber attack of sorts. Experts say that big tech companies generally have backup servers that reboot the system during a service disruption.

To recall, WhatsApp claimed in May 2019 that it stopped a highly sophisticated cyber attack that exploited the platform's video calling system in order to send malware to the mobile devices of a number of WhatsApp users. The cyber attack did not require targeted users to answer the calls they received. The platform then reportedly rolled out new protections to our systems and issued an update to WhatsApp to help keep people safe.

WhatsApp has nearly 500 million users in India alone. Cyber experts have said that WhatsApp's inability to fix this issue urgently is a disaster of sorts for Meta and poses serious questions about its reliability. It could push users to adopt other platforms like Telegram. Of late, many Indian users had been complaining of brands spamming their messengers and accused Meta of sharing their details with the advertisers to earn profit.

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