A number of well-respected security professionals have slammed the news agency Bloomberg for an op-ed it ran on Tuesday, claiming that WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption was a gimmick, after reports emerged that the app could be exploited by mobile spyware by merely calling the phone of a would-be victim.

The US Government must hold Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg accountable for all the problems that the social media site has visited upon its users, Chris Hughes, a co-founder of the company, says in an op-ed, in which he also called for the company to be broken up.

Australia’s competition watchdog, the ACCC, has proposed that the country’s wholesale mobile voice services should continue to be regulated for a further five years.