The messaging app experiences new connectivity issues

Jun 14, 2018 06:10 GMT  ·  By

WhatsApp is down once again, and we’re seeing reports of connectivity problems from both Europe and the United States.

No official announcement has been made so far, but the number of users who cannot connect to the service is growing every minute, with the #whatsappdown hashtag now trending on Twitter.

Sending messages on WhatsApp fails with a connection error, with the Android client showing a message "Checking for new messages" when launching the app. On iOS, the app shows a "Connecting..." message in each chat window.

Needless to say, adjacent services like WhatsApp Web do not work either, as they require a working connection with a mobile phone.

Europe mostly affected

DownDetector.com indeed seems to point to WhatsApp connection issues in several regions, including Germany, Malaysia, Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina. Other parts of Europe are also hitting similar problems, but they seem to be more isolated. The UK, Italy, Spain, and France are among countries where WhatsApp also fails to connect for some users. Reports on Twitter also confirm problems in India, Singapore, and New Zealand.

At this point, there are no details available as to what is causing the outage, but problems like these are regularly experienced by WhatsApp. A cyber-attack is less likely though, despite several groups previously claiming to take down the service when outages occurred.

The official Twitter handles of WhatsApp are yet to confirm the downtime, though there's a good chance that the engineering team is already investigating.

In the meantine, users can switch to alternatives like Telegram, or simply turn to the traditional SMS messaging which obviously comes with some associated costs for each carrier.

UPDATE 1: We're seeing signs of connectivity issues being addressed in several parts of Europe, though complaints on Twitter with the #WhatsAppDown hashtag keep pouring in.

UPDATE 2: Countries where WhatsApp is confirmed to be down: Germany, Malaysia, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Singapore, France, UK, Italy, Spain, New Zealand, Australia.

UPDATE 3: Users in Pakistan have confirmed that WhatsApp is down locally as well.

UPDATE 4: The service is being restored in more regions and we're now seeing normal activity in Europe and the US.

UPDATE 5: WhatsApp has fixed all issues in approximately 30 minutes after servers went down and everything appears to be working normally now, with only isolated reports of connectivity problems.

UPDATE 6: It looks like WhatsApp is now experiencing activation issues, with iPhones not allowed for the time being to activate a new instance of the app. (continue reading below for more updates)

WhatsApp activation issue on iPhone

UPDATE 7: WhatsApp was also down in Switzerland, but issues here have already been fixed.

UPDATE 8: Activation problems have also been resolved, and iPhones can now start using WhatsApp normally as well.

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WhatsApp appears to be down in Europe and the US
WhatsApp activation issue on iPhone
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