[imagesource: Reuters/Thomas White]

Around 1,5 billion people around the world use WhatsApp.

Thankfully, unlike Facebook, your parents can’t comment on every single thing you do on the messaging platform, which is a plus.

You’re already on the lookout for fake voicenotes and wild conspiracy theories, both of which are rife on WhatsApp, and now you should add the WhatsApp ‘crash code’ message to that list.

Essentially, WhatsApp isn’t able to process the message – usually a series of random characters that make no sense – which leads to an infinite crash.

There’s a chance users will have to delete and reinstall WhatsApp to make it work again, which could result in losing your entire chat history.

Potentially good news for some, but less so for the rest of us. More from TechRadar:

Ray Walsh, a digital privacy expert at ProPrivacy, says the phenomenon is extremely concerning because of the sheer number of people using WhatsApp globally…

“Once the message has been received, the app will crash, and even closing and restarting the app will not fix the issue,” he says. “The current spate of text bomb messages appears to have originated in Brazil, however, it is now spreading globally.”

You can’t stop friends and family from forwarding such a message on to you, but there is a way you can stop random numbers from hitting you:

Open up your WhatsApp settings, head to the ‘Privacy’ section and change the ‘Groups’ setting so that only your contacts can add you to a group.

Walsh advised anyone unfortunate enough to have receiver a crash code message to log into their account in the web-based version of WhatsApp, block the person who sent the message, and then delete it. This might prove tricky unless you are already logged into WhatsApp Web, as you need to scan a QR code using the WhatsApp mobile app.

All in all, not ideal.

At this stage, it’s not clear if the ‘crash code’ messages are widespread here in South Africa, but it only takes one numpty to set the wheels in motion.

If you want to dig deeper int the message and how they work, WABetaInfo has more information.

[source:techradar]