Sep 07, 2024
Sep 07, 2024
Recently, it has come to the attention of many that certain clones of WhatsApp and particular software can actually overcome the restrictions set by WhatsApp. This, in turn, is helping the political activists and digital marketing agencies.
For this reason, WhatsApp is facing a huge challenge these days. WhatsApp is a big name in the social media platforms and is owned by Facebook Inc. Yet it continues to face problems with scams in its one of the biggest markets, India where it has almost 200 million users.
And even if it seems scam, India has no short of this process. Especially, during the election campaign of 2019 such tools became demanding and more and more digital marketing agencies are creating such software to promote mainly both the BJP and the Congress parties.
Essential Aspects To Know
Last year it was found that immense false messages were circulating. after that facebook authority took the matter seriously and restricted forwarding messages to up to 5 people at a time only. But the software tools appear more advanced and can even break this restriction of Facebook so that their message can reach to 1000 people at a time during Election 2019.
Reuters found that largely during the political campaigns in India there goes misusing of the WhatsApp. Mostly free clone apps are used by the political parties to reach the mass of a country and deliver bulk messages from anonymous numbers. Many online marketing service providers are now creating such software to provide political parties with the much required online support to spread promotional messages for the elections.
One can easily buy such software from major online portals and when purchased they come without any brand name.
Whatsapp clones are nothing but the modified versions of the original app that are specially designed to bypass the anti-spam protection of the main app and advertise videos and messages. And this was also done in Nigeria and Indonesia during elections this year.
As for the Indian political leaders and parties, social media platforms specifically WhatsApp and Twitter are the main tools to target the country’s citizens. From one of the sources, it has been reported that few Congress and BJP workers used WhatsApp clone apps that enable them to break through the restrictions.
It is also hard to identify the clone apps as they have similar green shades just like the original WhatsApp colour. Although they are not available on Google Play but can be used on Android phones.
Whatsapp said that it will ban such users if detected. This means the company will block such users permanently.
In such conditions, there is another way out and that is the business sender. This team of a software developer can build software to add mobile numbers in a field and then send to many after extracting the contact from the WhatsApp group. And this software will cost $14.
Although such software creation is a kind of piracy and should be stopped, yet it remains a big question if people will stop using them. The very existence of such tools is tempting after all. And when elections hit the country, a steady rise in the use of such software can be found.
20-Jul-2019
More by : Dr. Pranab Bhandari