Some bad news coming out today for those that use WhatsApp Plus. If you are unaware, WhatsApp Plus is basically a third party app that has all the same features as WhatsApp, but has a cleaner design, different themes and a slew of other features available as well. It does still use WhatsApp's servers, which is why they can see who is using WhatsApp Plus. It is against WhatsApp ToS to use WhatsApp Plus, which is why I stopped using it a while ago. And now it looks like WhatsApp is temporarily banning users that are using WhatsApp Plus.

It looks like the first users to see this ban go into effect were in India, at least those were the ones that first reported it. It seems to have started at 12:00am IST on January 21st. Remember Indian Standard Time or IST, is about 10 hours and 30 minutes ahead of Eastern Standard Time. So this just started within the last hour or so. Users have also reported that uninstalling WhatsApp Plus and installing WhatsApp hasn't lifted the ban. The temporary ban seems to be for about 24 hours. Which isn't too bad. It's better than being banned forever, but it still sucks.


We'll be keeping our eyes and ears open to see if we hear more about what's going on here. It seems a bit odd, but maybe WhatsApp's parent company Facebook, is beginning to crack down on these third-party apps. Although, if WhatsApp would actually update their design once in a while, maybe WhatsApp Plus wouldn't be so popular everywhere? WhatsApp is a very popular messaging service, and in developing countries, especially ones like India, it's extremely popular. So getting temporarily banned is actually a really big deal.

How many of you have been using WhatsApp Plus? Let us know what you think about all of this in the comments below.