WhatsApp this week: Bugs, features and more

From bugs in WhatsApp's platform to Status feature coming to JioPhones, here's everything that happened in the world of WhatsApp in the past week.

WhatsApp and PayPal announced that they had invested in payment, food delivery and ride-hailing app operator Gojek. (Pixabay)

WhatApp is arguably one of the most popular messaging apps in the world. It's constantly adding new features to its platform and improving the old ones. Mostly, reports give us a glimpse of the app's upcoming features. But this week, the app made headlines for the bugs in its platform.

In addition to the bugs, reports also detailed features that were coming to the app's KaiOS-based platform.

In case you missed out on the updates, here's a list of all the WhatsApp-related things that made a headline this past week:

Your WhatsApp phone number is searchable on Google Search

Bug bounty hunter Athul Jayaram told Threatpost that a bug in the platform's Click to Chat feature was putting the phone numbers of WhatsApp users at a risk by allowing Google Search to index them.

As individual phone numbers are leaked, an attacker can message them, call them, sell their phone numbers to marketers, spammers, scammers,” he said in a statement to the publication.

Scammers find new tricks to hijack WhatsApp accounts

Quite often we hear reports about hackers using malicious ways to gain access to users' accounts. This week a report detailed that hackers are posing as members from WhatsApp's Support Team and sending messages to users saying that someone else was trying to register a WhatsApp account using their numbers. The message then asks users to share the six-digit verification code that has been sent to them via SMSs.

Once the users share this code, they are logged out of their accounts.

WhatsApp invests in Indonesian super app Gojek

WhatsApp and PayPal announced that they had invested in payment, food delivery and ride-hailing app operator Gojek. The news was confirmed by WhatsApp CEO Matt Idema in a blog post wherein he said his company would work with Gojek "to support the growth of millions of small businesses".

WhatsApp for Jio Phone to get Status feature soon

Lastly, WhatsApp is planning to roll out Status feature on KaiOS-powered smartphones soon. This means that JioPhone users will soon be able to share Status updates on WhatsApp via their JioPhones.