As of 2025, GBWhatsApp still operates via unofficial channels, but its availability has been significantly restricted by technical limitations and legal crackdowns. Meta’s third-quarter report for 2025 reports that there are 230,000 GBWhatsApp accounts blocked globally on a daily basis (58% increase from 2023), mainly due to the fact that the device fingerprint identification system has been enhanced (317 detection parameters, 99.1% accuracy). For example, since A from India installed GBWhatsApp in July 2025, it got blocked in mere 12 hours (the success rate of the recovery of account is 0%) and historical chat records are gone forever.
Technical compatibility problems are in bold relief. The Android 16 system introduced in 2025 imposed hardware-level restrictions on unauthorized apps (e.g., disabling Google Play services), and the failure rate of GBWhatsApp installation rose from 34% to 78% (measured data on Xiaomi and Samsung devices). Tests done at the Technical University of Berlin showed that even when the installation was smooth, the median delay in message delivery was 1.9 seconds (0.3 seconds for official WhatsApp), memory usage was 512MB due to redundancy in code (just 120MB for official), and low-end phones such as Redmi 10A crashed 41% (5% for official).
Legal risk cost has skyrocketed. The EU’s revised 2025 Digital Services Act provides a limit on the first-time offence of disseminating or using gbwhatsapp of 6% of global revenue ($8.54 billion for the Meta 2024 revenue of $142.3 billion), with the typical retroactive fine to users raised to €4,200 (upon a five-year usage trend). In 2025, a German court case indicated that a small and medium-sized business needed to pay a 58,000 euro fine due to employees using GBWhatsApp to transmit customer information (chance of leakage is 47%) (the rate of compliance with official corporate version is 100%).
Security incidents trigger systemic threats. According to Kaspersky’s 2025 report, 41% of GBWhatsApp installations contain malicious code (e.g., LockBit 4.0 ransomware), which infects 12,000 devices per day, and the median one-time decryption ransom is 0.5 bitcoin (about $34,000). In the “ModGate 2025” case in Brazil, attackers stole 2.3 million payment verification codes (black market unit price of $2.10 / piece) by tampering with the message cache module, and directly lost more than $48 million.
User attrition and alternatives growth. GBWhatsApp global active users fell to 31 million in 2025 (down 85% from 210 million in 2020), mainly due to the official WhatsApp Business integration enhance features (e.g., auto-reply, multi-device sync), and the enterprise average cost per year is only $72 ($0.2 per day). And the message encryption is FIPS 140-3 certified (involves 10^38 years to break it). Market stats reveal that 83% of the initial GBWhatsApp users proceeded to compliance measures, and the cost of repairing equipment dropped by 98% (from $120 to $2.40 annually).
In short, GBWhatsApp can still be used in 2025, but legal oppression (€4,200 risk of fines), technical flaws (78% installation failure rate) and security vulnerabilities (41% rate of malicious code) make it a dangerous option, and rational users have already moved to the official ecosystem completely.