WhatsApp is enabling new privacy measures to protect users

WhatsApp is now applying new privacy measures to protect WhatsApp users from unauthorized third-party apps.

In the last few days, WhatsApp has enabled new privacy measures to protect its users, preventing unknown contacts to get your last seen and the online status if you have never chatted with them.
Some people have already noticed that they are unable to see the last seen of some contacts and business accounts, and the customer support explains that this is a privacy measure:

But why has WhatsApp implemented this change? Maybe you don’t know, but if you visit the App Store or the Google Play Store you can find some third-party apps that are able to log the last seen and the online status of select contacts. People use these apps to stalk other WhatsApp users, so they know when other people were online, but this was the only information they were able to get.

Thanks to the latest improvements to protect users, WhatsApp doesn’t show up the last seen and the online status if you have never chatted with another WhatsApp account. Since those third-party apps don’t have an active chat with you, they cannot see when you are online.
If you cannot see the last seen of some contacts you already chat with, it’s because they have enabled the privacy setting “My Contacts Except…”, available to some users on WhatsApp beta for Android and WhatsApp beta for iOS, excluding you to see their last seen.

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