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Don’t get hacked; protect your WhatsApp account

08 October 2020 Photo Istock

Whatsapp security — It is important to be safe when using WhatsApp. Do not leave your phone unattended when you are not close by.

There are 2 billion WhatsApp users in the world, and 1,6 billion WhatsApp users access their accounts on a daily basis.

However, it is important to also be safe when using this popular communication tool.

According to Cobus van Jaarsveld, Assistant Director: Threat Detection, Investigations and Liaison in Protection Services, it does happen that people’s WhatsApp accounts get hacked; this is a serious violation of privacy.

“It means a third party now has unlimited access to your personal chats, information, media – and in some instances, they can also masquerade as you by deleting your chats, replying to your chats, and committing crimes. That’s just the tip of the iceberg of how harmful it can be to get hacked,” says Van Jaarsveld.

He adds: “Hackers can access your WhatsApp data by various means, e.g. via WhatsApp web or registering your number on another device.

The South African Police Service (SAPS) provided the following tips to prevent one’s WhatsApp from getting hacked:

• Log out from all computers that you see in the list under WhatsApp Web. This will stop hackers from further reading your chats. However, this should be done every time you use WhatsApp web.
• Do not leave your phone unattended when you are out.
• Lock all your apps to prevent unknown people from accessing your apps.
• Do not connect your phone to unknown Wi-Fi connections, as hackers can also use the unique MAC address to access all your WhatsApp chats.
• In case your WhatsApp has already been hacked, deactivate your account by emailing support@whatsapp.com. Your account will be automatically deleted if not accessed for 30 days.
• Enable two-step verification under your WhatsApp account settings. This will add an extra layer of security to the app.
• Lock WhatsApp. It is imperative to have the AppLocker that will help you lock your WhatsApp. While WhatsApp does not offer this application per se, you can download it and the app will facilitate the use of your WhatsApp with a password or PIN. This will help to prevent anyone who has access to your phone from accessing your WhatsApp account, since they will require a password to open it.

News Archive

US author launches book at UFS on African volk

2016-10-17

Description: Dr Jamie Miller Tags: Dr Jamie Miller

Dr Jamie Miller, Postdoctoral Fellow at the
University of Pittsburgh and author of
An African Volk: The Apartheid Regime
and Its Search for Survival.
Photo: Rulanzen Martin

“I realised the importance of not just accessing the policies and political approaches of the leaders of the apartheid regime, but understanding the ideas and world views that informed them. Part of the solution to this was to learn Afrikaans.”

This is according to Dr Jamie Miller, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pittsburgh, on how he went about getting inside the mind of South Africa’s apartheid regime in order to complete his book, An African Volk: The Apartheid Regime and Its Search for Survival.

The book was launched on 11 October 2016 by the Archive for Contemporary Affairs at the University of the Free State on the Bloemfontein Campus.

Volk refers to the Afrikaner nationalist movement
The book is an ambitious new international history of 1970s apartheid South Africa. It is based on newly declassified documents and oral histories, the majority in Afrikaans, which focus on the regime’s attempts to turn the new political climate to its advantage.

The term volk refers to the Afrikaner nationalist movement, also known as Afrikanerdom. The story of Afrikaner nationalism was the medium through which the regime gained power.

Four main messages from the book
Dr Miller says there are four main messages for his readers. Firstly, the apartheid regime looked to contest and hijack new ideas and norms that formed the postcolonial world, and secondly, that we need to start thinking more seriously about the Cold War in terms of domestic politics, not just geopolitics.

Thirdly, South Africa should be integrated into histories of the global South, and lastly, we should conceptualise the apartheid regime by looking at it not just as an imperial holdover, but also by looking at what was happening in the world in the time period in question.

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