BENGALURU: With over 1 billion user bases, WhatsApp is the world’s leading online cross platform messenger commonly used as a colloquial messaging app, which lacked the file sharing function. For more work oriented communication, the leading cross platform instant messaging client introduced a new update for Android and iOS that allow users to share locally stored documents with individuals as well as groups. The latest WhatsApp update version 2.12.453 for Android and 2.12.14 on iOS has a new documents icon to the paperclip attachments list. But for now the only type of document that can be added is PDF, where both the sender and receiver must be on the same version of WhatsApp to use this latest feature. However, this update has not been released to all Android users via Google Play.

To share the files in new version of WhatsApp, tap the attachment icon on the top right of the screen in the chat window and select the ‘document’ option, this opens a list of PDF files stored in the local drive that can be shared. But the navigation has limitation in opening specific folders in the local drive.

Founded in 2009, WhatsApp Messenger is the world’s leading proprietary cross-platform instant messaging client for smartphones. After months of being at beta stage, the application was eventually launched in November 2009 exclusively on the App Store for the iPhone. In January 2010, support for BlackBerry smartphones was added, and subsequently for Symbian OS in May 2010 and for Android OS in August 2010. With over 1 billion active users, WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook on February 19, 2014 causing a considerable number of users to move, or try out other message services. In late January 2015, WhatsApp was officially made available for PCs through a web client, under the name WhatsApp Web.

WhatsApp uses a customized version of the open standard Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP). Upon installation, the app creates a user account using one's phone number as the username to login. The app has a score of 2 out of 7 points on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's secure messaging scorecard for having communications encrypted in transit and having completed an independent security audit.

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