WhatsApp receives update after global outage; Fake version found with million downloads

WhatsApp Messenger update has rolled out following the temporary system failure that affected all countries in Europe and some countries in Asia.

The latest WhatsApp Messenger update has been rolled out early on Saturday, November 4, following the global outage that brought down the app the previous day. On Google Play Store, a counterfeit version of the Facebook-owned app has been discovered to have already a million downloads.

WhatsApp Messenger update is now available to download over the air and via APK and IPA files. The update has been expected after the app refused to send or receive messages as well as the persistent "connecting" indication. The system failure occured temporarily on Friday, November 3 across Europe, Pakistan, Iraq, Singapore and India, where about 200 million of the app's users come from.

Also read: Afghanistan bans WhatsApp; To follow KSA, China model?

Shortly after the outage took place, Facebook told Reuters that it is investigating into the matter. As of the press time, Facebook has not released any official statement yet explaining the outage. For Android phone owners, they can now manually install the update through this APK file from APK Mirror.

In the meantime, a potentially malicious WhatsApp counterfeit has been discovered on the Google Play Store. Surprisingly, the app named "Update WhatsApp Messenger" developed by "WhatsApp Inc*", with emphasis on the asterisk has more than a million downloads already. The genuine app already has more than a billion downloads.

IBTimes Singapore checked upon Google Play Store to look for the fake WhatsApp Messenger app. The said app has already been taken down as of this writing.

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