WhatsApp is just back after a hiatus that lasted a few hours. During the period it was down, users were being shown a ‘connecting’ message. Interestingly, chats continued to load during the period, which points to the issue perhaps being minor at best.
This should also explain the relatively short time it took for the messaging service to be back again. The issue was also likely related to the server, which means there was precious little that end users or others could have done as well.
The shutdown again was reported largely in Western Europe and Asia. This again has a lot to do with time zones as it is this part of the world that remained awake during the period while the rest were asleep.
WhatsApp later confirmed that they faced a shutdown and are working on it. Fortunately for its users, the problem has been remedied quickly enough, within just about an hour at best. The crash was reported at around 8 in the morning before things resumed by 9 AM in the UK.
Some theories doing the round to explain the crash was that it might have been hacked. WhatsApp though is yet to comment on that, which keeps the speculation open
The site DownDetector also showed a huge surge in reports of WhatsApp being down. The issues seems to origin from users in India, China, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Malaysia along with most parts of Europe but very few from America.
Users said they were unable to update their profile during the time WhatsApp was down, which included trouble updating or editing profile image as well.
The last time WhatsApp was down was in May though then also, the app was back within hours. However, with another outage happening so soon, questions are being raised about the reliability of the app and its ability to function flawlessly over a prolonged period of time.
