WhatsApp: Soon you won’t see when the contact was last online

For many, an annoying feature that cannot be deactivated. The information that I am online and when I was last in the app will be a thing of the past. Although not absolutely.

WhatsApp is changing under the wings of the Meta world. Some features that may seem annoying, even when invading your own privacy, seem to disappear. The company has finally announced that the personal presence status, which also reveals when exactly last time I was active in the application, will be removed. WhatsApp reported it. The creators of this popular communicator have long been convinced that finding a presence in the online world is not important. Despite the fact that there are applications for such tracking via WhatsApp, so far the company has argued that other data simply cannot be obtained.

Despite all these guarantees, which in principle do not mean anything for Meta applications, many users did not want to be able to follow them in principle through such a basic activity in the WhatsApp application. However, as usual, annoying tracking will not be removed absolutely not yet fully controlled by every user. The creators have announced that they are hiding their online status will occur in cases where you have never spoken to the WhatsApp contact. This actually brings a response to third-party applications that are available in the Google Play Store as well as in the App Store.

However, if you have a WhatsApp beta, you may already be testing a new tracking off feature in Settings that allows you to select contacts with whom you will not share such information. That is, if you do not see your contacts’ last online status, it will change the settings they have made and no exception has been granted to you. It is not clear when and whether such a function will be deployed and left to the customer at all, and WhatsApp does not provide more details.

Personally, I see this as a constant struggle and pressure on developers and especially the management of WhatsApp, which may be easier than leaving the user full control over the settings and especially the protection of their privacy. Maybe we’ll see each other someday.