Malicious Messages with Unsupported Characters Causing WhatsApp Crashes
Sep. 8, 2020Over the past few years, WhatsApp has suffered from multiple bugs that lead to crashes on bothAndroid phonesandiPhones. Another such message that crashes popular messaging app, WhatsApp, is now allegedly doing the rounds on the internet.
According to tipsterWABetaInfo, thebug is prevalent in Brazil. The tipster mentions various user reports from Brazilian WhatsApp users. These messages are usually vcards filled with unsupported characters. It is worth noting that this is not a new bug and it has been around for years. WhatsApp, however, has not fixed it yet.
While the official version of WhatsApp doesn’t include any fix, unofficial WhatsApp mods apparently have added ‘Crashcode protection’ to prevent such incidents from taking place. However, we would not recommend using them since your privacy may get compromised.
As a preventive measure, it is recommended toset your group privacy settings to My Contactsso that you don’t get added in groups having these crash messages. To do so, open WhatsApp and go toSettings -> Account -> Privacy -> Groups -> My Contacts.
If you have received such a message, there are two possible solutions. For those who have connected the device with WhatsApp Web, you could just open the chat from your PC and delete the message. Once you have deleted the message, WhatsApp should function normally.
If that doesn’t work, you’re left with no other option than reinstalling WhatsApp. You don’t have to uninstall and install again, though. You can simply go to the app’s settings and clear data for the app to sign in again. While you’re at it, do not forget to restore chat history if you have a recent backup.
Subin writes about consumer tech, software, and security. He secretly misses the headphone jack while pretending he’s better off with the wireless freedom.
