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Jakarta Post

Fake WhatsApp conned over 1 million downloaders

News Desk (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Tue, November 7, 2017

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Fake WhatsApp conned over 1 million downloaders To make things worse for WhatsApp, the developers of the app posed as the company by forging the company’s name. (Shutterstock.com/Denys Prykhodov)

A fake app called “Update WhatsApp Messenger” was recently taken down from Google Play Store.

However, despite having been taken down, there may already be lasting damage as over 1 million people have reportedly downloaded the fake app and unsuspecting users may still have it on their phones.

With the recent WhatsApp explicit GIF fiasco, the last thing the company would want is another problem, yet it seems that the software giant has had a rather unfortunate string of events.

Read also: WhatsApp responds to lewd GIF images controversy

To make things worse for WhatsApp, the developers of the app posed as the company by forging the company’s name.

According to the BBC, it was Reddit users who noticed the app’s peculiarities and shared them on the site.

This is not the first time Google Play Store users have been exposed to malware. According to Fortune, there have been other earlier apps that left users exposed, from children’s video games to a fake Pokémon Go app. (ezr/kes)

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