That time I accidentally “hacked” WhatsApp

In around 2015 I made probably the best professional decision of my life. I bought the domain lol.xxx. I was still fairly junior in my career at this point, and I had been finding it hard to stand out when contacting the agencies and product companies I was applying to at the time.

Having a ridiculous domain name and matching email address (omg@…) meant that I stood out to recruiters. I was finally getting noticed. It made a great conversation starter when talking to recruiters and hiring managers. I still believe it’s a large part of the reason why I got the opportunity to move to and settle down in another country and work with brilliant people.

So what does this have to do with WhatsApp? Well…

Around December of 2015, I began receiving cryptic emails like this —

I racked my brain trying to think who Richard Sinclair was and how I may have angered him. My mind came up blank. Then the next email came in —

I was fairly sure I hadn’t been hitting on anyone’s girlfriend. More and more confused messages came in, ranging from pleasantly curious to furiously aggressive —

It quickly started to click. They had all been signing off their WhatsApp messages with “lol.xxx”, not realising that this would create a hyperlink. WhatsApp had just enabled URL previews at the time, so the app was now showing a preview of my website to a bunch of people.

I tried my best to explain with mixed results. Some people understood. Some people were even more confused and angry.

At one point someone went as far as to dig out where I was currently working, dial the office phone number (which at the time went to a remote answering service as we were at a company event), and left me with the following hilarious/embarrassing message

“Hi we have a message from Sarah, she would like to know why you are hacking her WhatsApp and would like you to stop. Thanks have a great day”.

Like a fart at a funeral, I was mortified but so amused.

Sadly, WhatsApp eventually stopped showing the URL preview for all .xxx domains, and to this day I still wonder if this was because of me.

So that’s the story of how I confused and angered a bunch of people whilst “hacking” WhatsApp.