WhatsApp says that users will start seeing ads in some parts of the app, as owner Meta Platforms moves to a cultivate a new revenue stream by tapping the billions of people that use the messaging service

LONDON — WhatsApp said Monday that users will start seeing ads in some parts of the app, as owner Meta Platforms moves to cultivate a new revenue stream by tapping the billions of people that use the messaging service.

Advertisements will be shown only in the app’s Updates tab, which is used by as many as 1.5 billion people each day. However, they won’t appear where personal chats are located, developers said.

“The personal messaging experience on WhatsApp isn’t changing, and personal messages, calls and statuses are end-to-end encrypted and cannot be used to show ads,” WhatsApp said in a blog post.

It’s a big change for the company, whose founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton vowed to keep the platform free of ads when they created it in 2009.

Facebook purchased WhatsApp in 2014 and the pair left a few years later. Parent company Meta has long been trying to generate revenue from WhatsApp.

WhatsApp said ads will be targeted to users based on information like the user’s age, the country or city where they’re located, the language they’re using, the channels they’re following in the app, and how they’re interacting with the ads they see.

WhatsApp said it won’t use personal messages, calls and groups that a user is a member of to target ads to the user.

It’s one of three advertising features that WhatsApp unveiled on Monday as it tries to monetize the app’s user base. Channels will also be able to charge users a monthly fee for subscriptions so they can get exclusive updates. And business owners will be able to pay to promote their channel’s visibility to new users.

Slack, the widely used workplace messaging app, went down Wednesday in a widespread outage that left some of its users unable to communicate on the platform.

On the app’s help center website, Slack said, “We’ve received feedback that Slack is having some trouble and we’re investigating. Please visit Slack Status to see the latest updates.”

Slack status

At 10:27 a.m. Eastern time, the status tracker reported that users were having trouble using or loading Slack. 

At about 1 p.m. ET, the site said that the company was “still working to restore functionality to affected Slack features such as sending messages, workflows, threads and other API-related features.”

Slack outage: What to know

Slack told CBS MoneyWatch that its “teams are aware and are investigating the issue” and directed users to stay alert to updates on status.slack.com.

At the peak of the outage, more than 3,000 users reported they couldn’t access the platform, according to the website DownDetector. Some services appeared to be coming back online by mid-morning Wednesday, including group and direct messaging as well as emoticon reactions.

It was not immediately clear what had caused the outage. 

The Salesforce-owned messaging platform is widely used across global workspaces, with more than 200,000 paid customers and daily active users in over 150 countries, according to the company.

— This is a developing story. Please check back for updates. 

The Associated Press

contributed to this report.

Megan Cerullo

Megan Cerullo is a New York-based reporter for CBS MoneyWatch covering small business, workplace, health care, consumer spending and personal finance topics. She regularly appears on CBS News 24/7 to discuss her reporting.

NEW YORK — Scammers stole millions of dollars in cryptocurrency from people seeking remote work opportunities as part of an elaborate scheme, according to New York’s attorney general.

Attorney General Letitia James said Thursday that she’s filed a lawsuit in order to recover more than $2 million that she said was stolen from New Yorkers and others around the country.

James said the unknown network of scammers used unsolicited text messages to target people looking for remote work.

They told victims that the job involved reviewing products online in order to help generate “market data,” James’ office said. But in order to begin earning money, victims were told they had to open cryptocurrency accounts and had to maintain a balance equal to, or greater than, the price of the products they were reviewing.

The victims were assured they would get their investments back plus commission, but the funds simply went into the scammers’ crypto wallets, James’ office said. The product reviews were also conducted on a website set up as part of the scheme.

The suit cites seven victims, identified by pseudonyms, residing in New York, Virginia and Florida. One New York victim lost over $100,000, according to the suit. A Florida woman lost over $300,000.

“Deceiving New Yorkers looking to take on remote work and earn money to support their families is cruel and unacceptable,” she said in a statement. “Scammers sent text messages to New Yorkers promising them good-paying, flexible jobs only to trick them into purchasing cryptocurrency and then stealing it from them.”

James’ suit seeks to return the stolen funds.

Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said her office’s cryptocurrency unit traced over $2 million in stolen crypto and identified the digital wallets where the coins were being held. Then, working with James’ office, they were able to have the currency frozen until they could be returned to victims.

“Work scams that prey on those seeking legitimate employment not only rob victims of their hard-earned money but also shatter their trust in the job market,” she added.

MELBOURNE, Australia — Australian police said Wednesday they have infiltrated Ghost, an encrypted global communications app developed for criminals, leading to dozens of arrests.

The app’s alleged administrator, Jay Je Yoon Jung, 32, appeared in a Sydney court Wednesday on charges including supporting a criminal organization and benefitting from proceeds of crime.

Jung did not enter pleas or apply to be released on bail. He will remain behind bars until his case returns to court in November.

Australian police arrested 38 suspects in raids across four states in recent days while law enforcement agencies were also making arrests in Canada, Sweden, Ireland and Italy, Australian Federal Police Deputy Commissioner Ian McCartney said.

“We allege hundreds of criminals including Italian organized crime, motorcycle gang members, Middle Eastern organized crime and Korean organized crime have used Ghost in Australia and overseas to import illicit drugs and order killings,” McCartney told reporters.

Australian police had prevented 50 people from being killed, kidnapped or seriously hurt by monitoring threats among 125,000 messages and 120 video calls since March, Assistant Commissioner Kirsty Schofield said.

Police allege the Jung developed the app specifically for criminal use in 2017.

Australia joined a Europol-led global taskforce targeting Ghost in 2022.

Col. Florian Manet, who heads France’s Home Affairs Ministry National Cyber Command Technical Department, said in a statement issued by Australian police that his officers provided technical resources to the task force over several years that helped decrypt the communications.

McCartney said the French had “provided a foot in the door” for Australian police to decrypt Ghost communications.

Australian police technicians were able to modify software updates regularly pushed out by the administrator, McCartney said.

“In effect, we infected the devices, enabling us to access the content on Australian devices,” McCartney said, adding that the alleged administrator lived in his parents’ Sydney home and had no police record.

Jung was arrested at his home on Tuesday.

Police say Jung used a network of resellers to offer specialized handsets to criminals around the world.

The modified smartphones sold for 2,350 Australian dollars ($1,590) which included a six-month subscription to Ghost and tech support.

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This version has corrected the suspect’s family name to Jung.