BTbtdmaster·Jan 23, 2023
It looks like they're getting users banned [0] for using alternative clients.
[0] https://github.com/tgalal/yowsup/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aop...
In Expanding Features for End-to-End Encryption on Messengertgalal
yowsup
Python2013–2023
tgalal / yowsup
yowsup
The WhatsApp lib
13Distinct people
17Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
7.2KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
The WhatsApp lib
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year17 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2013-12-16 07:03:39 UTC to 2023-01-23 22:32:31 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 2014 | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 1 | 2 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
What Hacker News says
17 sources[1] is that for whatsapp. It implements everything from scratch, including the crypto and all the many layers of message encapsulation. I believe there are a few other clients too. It even implements the API's to create a new account, so you don't even need to touch their client code at all.
FB messenger doesn't yet have e2e encryption, so there hasn't yet been any need.
[1]: https://github.com/tgalal/yowsup
In Expanding Features for End-to-End Encryption on MessengerFor example: https://github.com/tgalal/yowsup
The code is a bit nightmarish, but it's hackable to do whatever you like. Whatsapp will ban you if they detect you using it, so make sure to update the client version numbers etc, and use a burner number for testing if using their live servers.
In How to decrypt WhatsApp end-to-end media filesYowsup – last WhatsApp (unofficial) Linux client
1 points · Open discussionHardcoded device maybe:
https://github.com/tgalal/yowsup/blob/master/yowsup/env/env_...
In Show HN: Whapp-irc – A simple WhatsApp IRC gateway> reverse engineer network requests and write a more raw client
People already have done that. The most famous example is the yowsup [1] python library. The problem with these client implementations is that WhatsApp is banning any numbers that use them [2]. So most recent attempts to use WhatsApp outside of the official clients revolve around using WhatsApp Web somehow. That appears to work better, but even here if you are using it on a long term basis, WhatsApp might ban you.
Ultimately, WhatsApp is a bad host when it comes to using their service outside of the official app. This is really sad for people like me who don't want to install WhatsApp on their phones because it sends too much of my data to Facebook... probably that's precisely why they are so strict, to get all the data because that's all they get (the service is gratis after
Read the rest
all). That and spam.
[1]: https://github.com/tgalal/yowsup
[2]: http://google.com/search?q=yowsup+name+ban
There's also a Python library: https://github.com/tgalal/yowsup
In Reverse Engineering WhatsApp Webit still is
https://github.com/tgalal/yowsup
In Postmortem of Service Outage at 3.4M Concurrent UsersYou don't need an emulator.
https://github.com/tgalal/yowsup
In Browserling goes viral with cheap phone users trying to use WhatsAppI don't see why people suddenly panic about it.. That's not a new thing. I wrote my own Tracking app over 2 years ago. I still have the code and database laying around.
I was using https://github.com/tgalal/yowsup back then.
Back then you could even see when people requested your online-status. Meaning you could see when they opened your chat. Back then I used that to see if my message have been read because the message-read notification didn't exist back then.
In Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsAppWell there is https://github.com/tgalal/yowsup/
but i would not recommend using it
In Show HN: Eul – a lightweight desktop client for Skype, Slack, Gmail, and moreHave you looked at how https://github.com/tgalal/yowsup get around this?
In WhatsApp web apiLots of people.
https://github.com/tgalal/yowsup for example
In Viber adds end-to-end encryptionWhatsApp Unofficial API Back on GitHub
1 points · Open discussionShowing the 15 most recent of 17 sources. Enable JavaScript to search and browse every indexed mention.