WhatsApp is going to be shutdown for 48 hours in Brazil, on the orders of a Sao Paolo judge.

The messaging app is the single most used app in the South American nation, with 93% of the country’s internet popular using it, around 93m people.

Amost Genish, who runs the telecoms firm Vico there, has referred to the apps as "pure privacy", and a variety of telco’s in the country having been attacking the app to the government, claiming the voice service it offers is unregulated and illegal.

They believe that the app is utilising the numbers that belong to them, and has allowed millions of Brazilians to get rid of a mobile phone line.

The name of the individual or company who pushed for the injunction has not been named.

Brazil’s web users are in the top two or three on every social media platform, but the social web is hugely controversial there. The country’s politicians are proposing a variety of new laws that would censor the social web.

The moves come just a few years after the country has pushed for net neutrality, passed a "Bill of Rights" that limited online snooping on citizens, and has even tried to separate itself from the American internet.

Private messaging app Telegram announced in the early hours of December 17th that it gained one million new Brazilian users in just one day.