WhatsApp activates new security measure

WhatsApp has activated new security measures on its messaging platform to prevent unknown contacts from seeing a user’s last seen or online status.

As reported by WABetaInfo, the privacy setting changes are designed to protect WhatsApp users from certain apps available on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store that allow people to “stalk” other users.

WhatsApp now doesn’t show the last seen and the online status if you have never chatted with another account, and since those third-party “stalking” apps don’t have an active chat with you, they cannot see when you were last online.

“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,” the messaging service wrote to a user in a support email.

While WhatsApp has allowed users to set their last seen status to only be visible to “My Contacts” for a while now, the setting was never enabled by default until now.

Users who cannot see the last seen status of a contact they have chatted with before may have been blocked from viewing the status through the “My Contacts Except…” WhatsApp privacy setting.

WhatsApp began rolling out the “My Contacts Except…” feature in its Android and iOS beta in November 2021.

Other privacy changes recently made by the messaging service include new time frames for disappearing messages.

Previously, WhatsApp users could only set messages to disappear after seven days, but the company has now added 24-hour and 90-day options to the privacy setting.

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