WhatsApp has enabled new privacy measures to protect its users, preventing unknown contacts from seeing your last seen and online status if you have never chatted with them, WABetaInfo reported. Previously, WhatsApp set the feature on “Everyone” by default, allowing anyone on WhatsApp to see your status. The recent update limits the visibility of the status only to the people added on the platform and sets the feature to “My Contacts” by default.
Read more: WhatsApp Rolls Out Disappearing Messages and Multiple Durations Features
New privacy measures upgraded WhatsApp Last seen and Online status
WABetaInfo explained the reason behind the up-gradation of WhatsApp Last seen and Online status, the firm said; “Maybe you don’t know, but if you visit the App Store or the Google Play Store you can find some third-party apps that can log the last seen and the online status of select contacts. People use these apps to stalk other WhatsApp users, so they know when other people were online, but this was the only information they were able to get.”
The WhatsApp updates tracker further added, “Thanks to the latest improvements to protect users, WhatsApp doesn’t show up the last seen and the online status if you have never chatted with another WhatsApp account. Since those third-party apps don’t have an active chat with you, they cannot see when you are online. If you cannot see the last seen of some contacts you already chat with, it’s because they have enabled the privacy setting.”
The privacy concerns
All these recent changes related to privacy are because of the huge criticism the parent company, Meta, faced throughout the year. Privacy has been the most focused topic for WhatsApp in 2021, with the company facing scrutiny at the start of the year after it announced changes to its privacy policy. The company was also fined $260 million for privacy violations in the EU.
Source: WABetaInfo
