While the whole world runs at the fingertips of every individual, what happens if the technology doesn't work for a few minutes or hours? Yes, that is what it was like when WhatsApp was down for almost two hours on October 25. The outage or server downtime which started post 12 noon was reportedly resolved after 2 pm. As the social platform was not functional, users took to Twitter to express their outrage.
Also, it was recently the facilitation of financial transactions began via WhatsApp similar, to Google Pay. WhatsApp is used for multiple things like chatting, audio and video calling with friends and family, sending audio notes and so on. So, with 350 million users on WhatsApp and almost three billion on Facebook across the globe having multiple day-to-day exchanges on WhatsApp, what are the problems users faced during this outage and what is the company saying? #WhatTheFAQ is here to give you all these details.
What did the company say?
After the outage became more prominent, the parent company of WhatsApp, Meta, released a statement. "We're aware that some people are currently having trouble sending messages and we're working to restore WhatsApp for everyone as quickly as possible," a spokesperson said.
What were the problems faced by users?
- Unable to send a message
- Messages not getting delivered
- Unable to log in to WhatsApp Web
- Audio and video call facility not working
- Changes in setting
- Updating profile and picture
What was the reason and who tracked it?
Although Meta was silent when it comes to disclosing the reason, it was Downdetector who detected the outage. Downdetector is an online platform which provides users with real-time information about the status of various websites and services. It tracks outages by collating status reports from a number of sources including user-submitted errors on its platform.
Was this issue only in India?
No. Reportedly, as the hashtag #WhatsAppDown was trending on Twitter, users from Indonesia, Kenya, Italy, Turkey, the UK and some Spanish-speaking territories along with India were seen complaining about the server downtime issue.
Any outages that happened earlier?
October 2021: Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp faced an outage for six hours due to a major DNS or Domain Name System failure. DNS is the service that translates human-readable hostnames to raw, numeric IP addresses.
March 2021: Due to a technical glitch, WhatsApp and Instagram suffered a major outage for 45 minutes. "A technical issue caused people to have trouble accessing some Facebook services. We resolved this issue for everyone, and we apologize for any inconvenience," a Facebook spokesperson said.
2020: There were four outages. One in January for three hours and another in April followed by a two-hour outage in July and lastly in August. A few reports say during April 2020 outage, Facebook and Instagram went down for PC (Personal Computer) and desktop users in the United Kingdom, North and South America and Europe for millions of users.
2019: In July Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp services went down across the world as users complained that they were not able to either post or see their feeds or photographs.
