District Judge James E. Boasberg rejected the Federal Trade Commission’s argument that Meta’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp violated antitrust laws.

Meta has introduced new tools to help cybersecurity researchers find bugs in WhatsApp. In a new blog post discussing the success of its Bug Bounty program over the last 15 years, Meta said the researchers asked for a product that would help them investigate WhatsApp-specific technologies better, and in response, it built WhatsApp Research Proxy.

By plugging tens of billions of phone numbers into WhatsApp’s contact discovery tool, researchers found “the most extensive exposure of phone numbers” ever—along with profile photos and more.

WhatsApp will add usernames linked to Instagram and Facebook handles, reducing phone number reliance and unifying identity across Meta apps.

WhatsApp is testing a new feature that lets users reserve unique usernames tied to their Instagram or Facebook handles.

10 years ago to the day, Facebook announced that it was purchasing WhatsApp for $19.6 billion — that’s billion, with a B. The news rocked the online world for several reasons, not the least of which being Facebook’s iffy privacy and data handling ...

As highlighted by the folks over at WABetaInfo after digging into version 2.25.34.3 of the app, WhatsApp users will have the option to reserve the same username as their Facebook and/or Instagram profile.