The messenger will only share your online status with existing contacts by default
It looks like WhatsApp is currently working on making it harder for strangers to snoop on your online status. The messaging service started the process a few weeks ago when it allowed beta users to hide their “Last seen” status from specific contacts, but it looks like the developers want to make it harder for strangers to see when you were last online by default. According to WABetaInfo, WhatsApp is changing the default “Last seen” visibility from “everyone” to “my contacts” on Android and iOS.
The new default behavior has also been confirmed to a Twitter user by WhatsApp support, and it looks like the service is automatically rolling it out for everyone. The change means that people and businesses who you haven’t previously chatted with won’t be able to see your status, and vice versa. While it’s always been possible to set your personal online logs to only be visible for contacts or even nobody, WhatsApp used to allow anyone to see everyone’s “Last seen” status in the past by default.
This will likely be a deadly blow for third-party apps that allow strangers to monitor someone else’s online status, giving them detailed insight into their chatting habits and maybe even sleep and work rhythms. Since these services rely on publicly available online status data, they’ll be increasingly useless — thankfully!
Right now, it looks like it’s possible to flip back your “Last seen” status to be visible for everyone in settings, but with WhatsApp changing the default behavior like this, we wouldn’t be surprised if that option was removed at some point. Regardless, we’d recommend not sharing your online status with anyone in possession of your phone number anyway for privacy reasons, so it’s definitely a change for the better.
WhatsApp is currently working hard on making its service more private, at least in relation to other people. Other than the mentioned option to hide your online stauts from certain contacts in the beta, the company has also recently introduced the option to make your messages disappear after a certain time frame by default for all chats.
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