WhatsApp has made a privacy change to prevent people on the messaging platform from viewing the "Last Seen" status of users whom they have never chatted with, according to the latest report from independent feature specialist WABetaInfo.
As regular WhatsApp users will know, the "Last Seen" status of a contact sits atop the conversation thread, informing you when that contact last opened the app and was active on the platform. Users can disable their "Last Seen" status so that other contacts can't see when they were last online, but the setting's options are currently limited to "Everyone," "My Contacts," and "Nobody."
The latest change behind the scenes is said to be a privacy and security feature to prevent people you don't know and haven't communicated with from seeing your "Last Seen" status and online presence in the app.
According to a response from WhatsApp support, people and businesses a user knows or has previously messaged are not affected by the change.
To improve the privacy and security of our users, we're making it harder for people you don't know and haven't chatted with from seeing your last seen and online presence on WhatsApp. This will not change anything between you and your friends, family, and businesses who you know or have previously messaged.
As WABetaInfo notes, if a user can't view the "Last Seen" of any contacts they've already chatted with, it's because they have turned off the visibility of their "Last Seen" status or they've adjusted it on a contact-by-contact basis, a feature currently available to some users on WhatsApp beta that has yet to roll out globally.
Top Rated Comments
I refuse to use WhatsApp despite people looking at me like I'm crazy and saying "What? Why don't you have it? You NEED it. Go download it." I'd love to use Signal but there is very little chance of me convincing friends, family, colleagues to download it when they already have WhatsApp. Even if I do convince some people they would need to then convince the people they know.
Facebook have got their claws into everyone with WhatsApp. It's businesses aswell that use it. So many places now have done away with email/live chat or rely on it less and just tell you to contact them via WhatsApp cause it's the "easiest way".
That all said, people really should be giving other apps a chance. We need to cut out Facebook from our lives.