If you’re an iPhone user, you might’ve seen a weird bug in WhatsApp that shows calls from 1970. You’re not the only one facing this as a lot of users are reporting weird timestamps in their call history. But what exactly is this bug and is it serious? Today, we’re going to explain what this bug is and what WhatsApp is doing about it.
What’s the bug?
iPhone users of WhatsApp are seeing random calls in their chats from 1st January, 1970. While chatting, they will randomly see missed calls from that date. They don’t do much and you can’t interact with those calls.
You just see them pop up in your chats and that’s it. Users are freaking out that they might be getting calls from the past, but don’t worry. No time travelling is happening (as of now) and you can sleep easy knowing that you’re not in the plot of some time travelling mission.
You might even see this date on some WhatsApp statuses.
Why 1970?
1st January, 1970 is known as either the Unix time or the epoch time. It’s widely used in file formats and operating systems. To put it mildly, that’s the starting date for all computer clocks.
With this bug, the WhatsApp clock is somehow resetting to its beginning. Users have reported missed call notifications from random times from this date. You might get it at 5:47 AM, 3:15 PM, or any time from this date.
The only common thing between all these notifications is that the date will be 01/01/1970.
How to fix the 1970 WhatsApp bug
WhatsApp has already taken notice of this bug and is working on it as we speak. There’s no clear-cut solution available right now, but we believe that a patch will come soon.
One user emailed WhatsApp support and here’s the reply they got.
Is it dangerous?
Thankfully, no.
According to our research, this bug doesn’t put you and your iPhone in harms way. This isn’t an exploit that hackers are targeting to get inside your phone and steal your information.
You can rest easy about a potential hack and just ignore those missed call notifications from 1970.
We continuously hunt for new bugs and find solutions for them. If you’d like us to help you out with something, feel free to reach us on Twitter @awsmtips.
I love understanding how different technologies work and explaining them to people. From tech guides to opinions, everything is interesting to me. Other than that, I enjoy writing about various science-related topics and conversing with people.
i get call from 1969 lol