Beware! “WhatsApp Is Shutting Down” Is A Fake News

The trio of Facebook-owned services – Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp – suffered an outage, with many users complaining that they couldn’t upload or download photos in their feeds and stories. The social media platforms were revived after some time as Facebook confirmed that the outage was due to maintenance operations.

Owing to the hours-long outage, a series of fake messages started flowing in warning users that WhatsApp has been banned by Facebook and if you need to use the service, you need to pay for it. If one is aware of the tech world, it is easy to spot the ingenuity of this fake message as it was signed-off with “Thank you – Google.”

WhatsApp is owned by Facebook and the sign-off by Google is a clear red flag. These messages are fake and neither WhatsApp is shutting down nor you’ll have to pay to use it.

Some fake messages even claimed that “WhatsApp will be shut down from 11:30 pm to 6 am every day as directed by the central government.”

While other hoax messages even went onto the extent of saying that WhatsApp has been acquired by Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio and will be a paid service henceforth.

To clear the air, these are nothing but fake messages circulating to dupe users. We advise you not to share such messages and further play a role in spreading misinformation.

India has been plagued by the issue of fake news and misinformation lately and these messages claiming WhatsApp is shutting down is another trick played by some mischevious elements of society.

Here are some tips you can use to spot fake news on WhatsApp, Facebook, and Twitter.

Also Read: Believe Me! This Is The Most Irritating Website On The Internet