AppMess News #14

Hey there! Welcome back to another edition of IM news. Now let’s talk about this week’s key events.

Slack is welcoming user feedback. This is why it has become easier to work with personalized messages in the recently updated messenger. This means that if you put @here in front of a text, you will not disturb offline users. In the past, when this option was unavailable, many users complained that the app didn’t take into account people’s time zones, and, as a result, users would get notifications in the middle of the night. So now you don’t have to worry about causing a disturbance.

We already heard that the UK wants to ban WhatsApp and here’s the follow-up info. The draft law on personal data and intelligence activities is to be considered next year, and if it is passed, the National Crime Agency will have the right to access private correspondence. WhatsApp representatives previously stated that security is their number one priority. However, at the same time, Facebook, the owner company, has recently given special services access to user personal data, satisfying their inquiries 75% of the time. This sort of gives a hint on the dim prospects of the US messaging app on UK soil. There are two options: WhatsApp either betrays its principals or leaves the local market.

Kik’s newest update has been put up. As you may recall, the last innovation touched on spam prevention and improved working with videos. This innovation focuses on recorded videos. Now, by tapping the media file image in the dialog box you can save the selected element directly to your gallery. Remarkably, the said function was launched on all popular platform at the same time on July 13. FYI, the iOS version no longer kills the app as you attempt to make a call.

Telegram was unable to withstand DDoS attacks. Over the last weekend, hackers successfully attacked Telegram’s Eastern and Australian servers. A few days later, developers were still unable to fully resolve the issue, saying that a third party was behind it, namely its competitors from Line. In addition to service troubles, Telegram was briefly removed from Google Play. Despite the current stable state of affairs, we witnesses the first large-scale mishap of Pavel Durov’s product.