{"id":427354,"date":"2021-12-14T09:27:15","date_gmt":"2021-12-14T07:27:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=427354"},"modified":"2021-12-14T09:27:43","modified_gmt":"2021-12-14T07:27:43","slug":"whatsapp-changes-default-privacy-settings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/software\/427354-whatsapp-changes-default-privacy-settings.html","title":{"rendered":"WhatsApp changes default privacy settings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>WhatsApp has activated new security measures on its messaging platform to prevent unknown contacts from seeing a user&#8217;s last seen or online status.<\/p>\n<p>As <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/wabetainfo.com\/whatsapp-is-enabling-new-privacy-measures-to-protect-users\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">reported<\/a><\/strong> 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 &#8220;stalk&#8221; other users.<\/p>\n<p>WhatsApp now doesn&#8217;t show the last seen and the online status if you have never chatted with another account, and since those third-party &#8220;stalking&#8221; apps don&#8217;t have an active chat with you, they cannot see when you were last online.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re making it harder for people you don&#8217;t know and haven&#8217;t chatted with from seeing your last seen and online presence on WhatsApp,&#8221; the messaging service wrote to a user in a support email.<\/p>\n<p>While WhatsApp has allowed users to set their last seen status to only be visible to &#8220;My Contacts&#8221; for a while now, the setting was never enabled by default until now.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">It\u2019s a new security feature. Got this reply from support today. If the person has not got your number in their contacts, or you haven\u2019t sent one message between you, last seen\/online is no longer visible. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/qLPtC6rPOA\">pic.twitter.com\/qLPtC6rPOA<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 PsyColette &#x1f385;&#x1f3fb;&#x1f384; (@NiHaolain) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/NiHaolain\/status\/1468281924057763849?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 7, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\nUsers 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 &#8220;My Contacts Except\u2026&#8221; WhatsApp privacy setting.<\/p>\n<p>WhatsApp began <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/it-services\/422806-whatsapp-rolling-out-big-privacy-update.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">rolling out<\/a><\/strong> the &#8220;My Contacts Except\u2026&#8221; feature in its Android and iOS beta in November 2021.<\/p>\n<p>Other privacy changes recently made by the messaging service include <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/software\/426410-whatsapp-message-privacy-update.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">new time frames for disappearing messages.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">Now read: <a href=\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/software\/426948-google-adding-android-games-to-windows.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Google adding Android games to Windows<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WhatsApp will now hide your last seen status from unknown contacts by default.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341076,"featured_media":414444,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[397,691,75088,4032,2594],"class_list":["post-427354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-software","tag-android","tag-ios","tag-last-seen-status","tag-privacy-settings","tag-whatsapp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427354"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341076"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=427354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427354\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}