Messaging app

The operation, jointly conceived by Australia and the FBI, saw devices with the ANOM app secretly distributed among criminals, allowing police to monitor their chats about drug smuggling, money laundering and even murder plots.

Officials called it a watershed moment.

Targets included drug gangs and people with links to the mafia.

WhatsApp alerted users to the controversial change to its privacy policy via an in-app notification which asks them to agree to share personal data, including their phone number and IP address, with Facebook.

“By tapping Agree, you accept the new terms, which take effect on February 8, 2021,” the notification states, adding “After this date, you’ll need to accept the new terms to continue using WhatsApp. You can also visit the Help Center if you would prefer to delete your account."

Users who do not accept the new policy by February 8 will lose access to their accounts.

You might be thinking why???

Because using this app in Turkish is illegal since last year.

The background story begins here...

Remember the deadliest Turkey's failed coup attempt?

In July 2016, a section of the Turkish military launched a coordinated operation—by deploying soldiers, tanks on the streets of major Turkish cities—to topple the government and unseat President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Confide, the secure messaging app reportedly employed by President Donald Trump's aides to speak to each other in secret, promises "military-grade end-to-end encryption" to its users and claims that nobody can intercept and read chats that disappear after they are read.

However, two separate research have raised a red flag about the claims made by the company.

While Facebook has been working to integrate bots with Messenger, Google went ahead and built a messaging app around the most useful bot there is: Google (GOOGL, Tech30) search.

Allo, which was announced in May but is now available for download, marries Google search with many of the fun features people have grown accustomed to using in other apps.

Last week, a British serial sex offender was jailed for four years after attempting to get a New Zealand teenager to send videos of herself performing sexual acts.

Wolverhampton man Gavin Rhodes, in his 30s, was banned from using computers to contact any girl under 16, but he used the Kik messaging app on his girlfriend's computer to contact the 14-year-old Kiwi.