Facebook-owned messaging app WhatsApp will no longer work on millions of smartphones from 1 February.

WhatsApp said it is necessary to block people who are running older versions of the Android or iOS operating systems.

However, this step will help in order to protect the security of its users.

‘Because we no longer actively develop for these operating systems, some features might stop functioning at any time,’ said WhatsApp in a blog post.

Smartphones using Android 2.3.7 and older, and iPhone iOS 8 or older, are those affected by the update.

The latest update will mean users on unsupported devices will no longer be able to create new accounts or re-verify existing accounts.

Every year the messaging app removes support for devices that ‘don’t offer the kind of capabilities we need to expand our app’s features in the future.

WhatsApp on Tuesday said that it will launch dark mode feature for its iPhone users with the launch of an update for the beta version on Google play platform.

Earlier, Cross-platform messaging and Voice over IP service WhatsApp found to have disclosed 12 vulnerabilities in 2019.

According to the entries available on the US National Vulnerability Database (NVD), WhatsApp reported 12 vulnerabilities last year.

A total of seven vulnerabilities of the total count were classed as “critical”.

The list of vulnerabilities disclosed by WhatsApp include the CVE-2019-3568 bug that marked critical and discovered within the VoIP (voice-over-Internet-protocol) stack of the app in May last year.

It allowed hackers to remotely execute malicious code on smartphones.

Similarly, another critical flaw that tracked by CVE-2019-11933 is a part of the US database.