Fact Check: Centre suspends WhatsApp from service between 11:30 PM-6 AM? Govt clarifies

A viral WhatsApp message has been doing rounds claiming that the Government of India has issued an order to suspend the application during the night. The message states that the government is banning WhatsApp, the instant messaging application developed by Facebook, from functioning during nights between 23:30 hours and 06:00 hours. The deceptive message goes on to state that the user's accounts would be deactivated if the message was not forwarded to more users.

In addition, the widely circulated fake news added that a monthly charge would be applicable to WhatsApp users to activate one's account. The message also claims that a new and safe WhatsApp account will be activated for users who follows the steps mentioned in the forwarded message. Now, the Press India Bureau (PIB) has released a fact check update dismissing the same as fake.

PIB dismisses the fake message 

Countering the misinforming message, a fact check update issued by the PIB urged users to avoid forwarding the message. Taking to Twitter, PIB shared, “It is being claimed in a forwarded message, that #WhatsApp will be closed from 11:30 pm to 6 am & a monthly charge will have to be paid to activate it. #PIBFactCheck: This claim is #FAKE. No such announcement has been made by GOI. Do not engage with such fraudulent links.” The fake viral message first surfaced only a couple of days after social media giants, namely, WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook suffered a major unprecedented outage earlier this month.

WhatsApp's new feature allows users to manage chat backup size

According to recent leaks from WABetaInfo, WhatsApp is currently working on releasing a new feature that helps manage their chat backup size. According to the report, users will have the ability to choose specific content like documents and photos to be removed/added to the cloud backup. The feature will allow users to exclude unnecessary data to not be included in the regular cloud backup. The release of this feature has been picked up by the tech geeks and they are curious to learn more about this upcoming WhatsApp feature. Currently, the facebook-owned messaging platform, WhatsApp doesn't provide any backup size-related details from the app. 

Image: PTI