Sending this message WhatsApp bomb damages cell phones Virus? Solution

They are not viruses, but there are long WhatsApp messages with strange characters that can make the other person’s cell phone or WhatsApp fail (at least temporarily) and even lose chats or conversations.

I don’t really mean to teach you how to damage someone else’s WhatsApp or their cell phone. Simply show that a few simple characters can make mobile electronics collapse, no matter how powerful or high-end it may be. The data processing capacity of the cell phone has a limit, and a simple “code” can exceed it. With a simple challenge, the other person can easily fall into the trap.

What messages damage WhatsApp?

Previously WhatsApp crashed with the fearsome message of the black dot, which I gave myself the task of copying and pasting to test it:

If you think that your cell phone is not damaged, touch 10 times here? <⚫> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Touching on that point made the cell phone freeze for a few seconds or even the app to stop if it was touched several times. Apparently, behind the drawing of that black dot (or the action when touching it) so many zeros and ones were generated (language used by machines) that it took the mobile several seconds to process them. That was the reason for being temporarily frozen, or for ending up “crashing” and the system closing WhatsApp. Then everything returned to normal.

This is not the only, first or last message of this type. The Hacker News portal said that, in general, messages with a size greater than 7MB can cause the WhatsApp application of the person who receives it to fail, immediately. Even much smaller 2Kb messages (pastebin.com/3efiBva4) damaged the other person’s WhatsApp when it was opened (WhatsApp 2.11.431, Android KitKat 4.4.2 and other systems).

WhatsApp crashes and won’t open

Although the above was harmless, it was solved simply by deleting the conversation and anyway it no longer causes problems in current versions of WhatsApp, there are more serious messages that cause really fearsome errors, to the point that if you see them, the app enters a « bootloop “or never starts again and” crashes “whenever you try to open it, as indicated WABetaInfo. The solution to this problem is to erase your WhatsApp data, which means that you will lose the latest conversations that have not been backed up.

Solutions

If you receive these types of messages, which, as I said, tend to have strange characters and are long, do not open the conversation, much less touch the “Read more” button (which appears because the text is quite long). If possible, directly delete the conversation. If it is a message from an unknown number, it is most likely trying to damage your WhatsApp.

Finally, go to WhatsApp Settings, Account, Privacy, Groups and activate the “My contacts” option so that only your contacts can add you to groups. In this way you prevent any stranger from adding you to a group where they intend to damage your WhatsApp and that of the other people in that group at the same time just by sending a message there.

Can you stop receiving WhatsApp messages from a contact WITHOUT blocking it?

Can WhatsApp “ban” you for deleting messages after hours or days?

Telegram also «FAILS» deleting messages (and it is WORSE than WhatsApp)