WhatsApp Status Error Message - Logo should Turn Red Hoax

Story:

Hello everybody.
WhatsApp is going to cost us money soon. The only way that it will stay free is if you are a frequent user i.e. you have at least 10 people you are chatting with. To become a frequent user send this message to 10 people who receive it (2 ticks) and your WhatsApp logo should turn Red to indicate a frequent user.

Other Versions

1. Whatsapp is shutting down on 28th jan Message from Jim Balsamic (CEO of Whatsapp) we have had an over usage of user names on whatsapp Messenger. We are requesting all users to forward this message to their entire contact list. If you do not forward this message, we will take it as your account is invalid and it will be deleted within the next 48 hours. Please DO NOT ignore this message or whatsapp will no longer recognise your activation. If you wish to re-activate your account after it has been deleted, a charge of 25.00 will be added to your monthly bill. We are also aware of the issue involving the pictures updates not showing.
We are working diligently at fixing this problem and it will be up and running as soon as possible. Thank you for your cooperation from the Whatsapp team.

2. Hello, I. Am riya director of whatsapp, this message is to inform all of our users that we have only 530 accounts available for new phones, and that our servers have recently been very congested, so we asking for your help to solve this problem. We need our active users to forward this message to every single person in your contact list in order to confirm our active users that use WhatsApp, if you do not send this message to all your contacts to WhatsApp, then your account will remain inactive with the consequence of losing all your contacts. The automatic update symbol on your SmartPhone, appear with the transmission of this message. Your smartphone will be updated within 24 hours, will feature a new design, a new color for the chat and the icon will change from green to azul.Whatsapp will pay rate unless you are a frequent user. If you have at least 10 contacts send this sms and logo will become red to indicate that you are a frequent user Tomorrow begin to take messages for whatsapp to 0.37 cents. Forward this message to more than 9 people in your contact list and you will be free lifetime blue look and the ball will make it up
As we shall see!

3. Message from Jim Balsamic (CEO of Whatsapp). We have had an over usage of user names on WhatsApp Messenger. We are requesting all users to forward this message to their entire contact list”.

“If you do not forward this message, we will take it as your account is invalid and it will be deleted within the next 48 hours. Please DO NOT ignore this message or WhatsApp will no longer recognise your activation.

4. Hello, I. Am john Sam director of whatsapp, this message is to inform all of our users that we have sold whatsapp to Mark Zuckerberg for 19 billion $. WhatsApp is now controlled by mark zuckerberg. If you have at least 10 contacts send this sms and logo of your whatsapp will change to a new icon with facebook’s “f” within 24 hours.Forward this message to more than 10 people to activate your new whatsapp with fac…ebook services or else your account will be deleted from new servers.
Confirming this is the new icon WhatsApp

Analysis:

Many people using the messaging service WhatsApp have been receiving these error messages, with the status field of everyone on their contact list shown as “error: unknown”, or “Error: status unavailable”. Following this they received shocking messages, claiming to be from the CEO of the company complaining that they are not making any kind of money, and people needed to forward the message to all the people in their contact list (or to at least few people in other versions of messages) and prove that they are legitimate users. The messages also say that once you forward the message, your WhatsApp logo will turn Red to indicate that you are a frequent user and your account will not be deleted. But the fact is that all these messages circulating online in various versions since few years are simply hoaxes, they are not from official Whatsapp team.

Note that some of these messages can also carry fake WhatsApp or Facebook login links that are actually phishing attempts to steal your information like passwords, messages or credit card details. WhatsApp was free to use and remains free, all these messages were simply spam that happened after a feature of the messaging service was affected on Wednesday morning. The company mentioned about this status functionality bug in their Twitter profile:
WhatsApp status functionality is currently not available. We are working on resolving it soon-ish…

WhatsApp also mentioned about these hoax messages on their official blog, saying that there is no truth in it. But since everyone likes to use things for free, the messages were circulated by many people. However, the feature of WhatsApp status message update was restored to normal in some phones, although the error message is still displayed on others. People who still have this error message on their phones need to trust the WhatsApp folks and wait for some time to let them restore it to normal; because similar things happened in the past as well and they restored it to normal.