[HN Gopher] Tracking the WhatsApp habits of random smartphones
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Tracking the WhatsApp habits of random smartphones
Author : jorislacance
Score : 180 points
Date : 2021-04-21 13:06 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jorislacance.fr)
(TXT) w3m dump (jorislacance.fr)
| fighterpilot wrote:
| I hate that you can't log out of Whatsapp temporarily. I have to
| turn off my internet or my phone to take a break from it, or
| uninstall and reinstall the app. A dark pattern that means I'm
| always logged in even when I don't want to be.
| spurgu wrote:
| What do you mean by "logged in"? You're only shown as "Online"
| when you have the app open. When you close it it turns to "Last
| seen".
| fighterpilot wrote:
| I meant I sometimes wish to take a break from both
| notifications as well as my counterpart seeing the message
| got pushed into my client and thinking I'm ignoring them. If
| there's unattended to messages I feel a social pressure to
| respond quickly. I want Whatsapp to be more like an email
| client which is far less intrusive into mental and emotional
| space.
|
| Now that I think more about it, I could do two things: (1)
| disable notifications, (2) make it so I disable the blue
| check and double check and appear offline. It'd effectively
| simulate logging off.
| SuchAnonMuchWow wrote:
| Personally, I enable battery saving mode: it prevent any
| app from using data in the background, so whatsapp won't
| synchronize with its servers at all unless the app is open.
|
| The drawback is that this behavior can not be enabled on a
| per-app basis: either all app synchronize, or none. So I
| don't have new emails either unless explicitly enabled, or
| any other similar app. The only thing that still works and
| notify without requiring the app to be open are text
| messages and phone calls.
|
| I consider that to be a feature, but other might not.
| spurgu wrote:
| Yeah I know very well what you mean! I do #1 (turn off
| notifications in the app settings) every now and then when
| I want to cut off a specific communication channel.
|
| I'm unsure how you'd do #2 though? There's a permission for
| background data, wonder if that would be enough? Let me
| know if you test it!
|
| I'm on Android btw.
| Brainmulch wrote:
| You can do this natively through whatsapp settings by
| turning off Read receipts, and can control who sees your
| "last seen" information as well
| smashah wrote:
| They should really allow people to disable this. I was surprised
| when a user came to me saying this is possible even with full
| privacy.
| hudixt wrote:
| I had done same thing around this in 2019. This doesn't stop at
| this.
|
| There were quite correlation that I was able to find with basic
| setup
|
| The results can be quite horrifying as you can predict plethora
| of things.
|
| - When is someone sleeping.
|
| - When they're working,etc.
|
| - If two person are talking to each other in closed group.
| gsich wrote:
| Did something similar in 2015, there was even an open-source
| program to do it with graphical statistics:
|
| https://maikel.pro/blog/en-whatsapp-privacy-options-are-illu...
| jorislacance wrote:
| Nice work !
| [deleted]
| gsich wrote:
| Not mine if that was not clear.
| kuu wrote:
| Can you share that research? Seems interesting
| [deleted]
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| > Yes, it's a picture. Trackers free
|
| I love that picture of a tweet, instead of an embedded one that
| takes 1 million years to load _after_ you have scrolled to it,
| and not before.
| computator wrote:
| > _Privacy setting for Last Seen: Set by default to Everyone and
| nobody configures it._
|
| It surprised me that only 10% of his random (French) sample is
| active daily (179/1751=10%). In my contacts, I do see people who
| have accounts but haven't used it in weeks, but it's not the
| norm. However, I see lots of people in my contacts who show no
| info for Last Seen. Is he underestimating how often people
| configure the privacy setting for Last Seen? Or perhaps there is
| another factor that determines when Last Seen gets shown?
| lxgr wrote:
| At least in my group of friends (which is probably a very bad
| sample), hiding "last seen" is very common.
|
| I really dearly wish there was one for the online status as
| well, and I'm glad to have spent my teenage years in a time
| where SMS was the norm, where neither read receipts nor online
| status was available. It made for a much more relaxed messaging
| experience (which iMessage seems to be much better at
| approximating).
| CiTyBear wrote:
| His script start from the bottom of 06 XX XX XX XX (french
| mobile number) and increases. This is not the most efficient
| way to have working/active numbers.
|
| As he said, starting with 06 numbers are saturated by now and
| we opened 07 XX... numbers. Thus, 07 numbers are more likely to
| be fresher et more used by "younger" people. While first 06
| could be more used by professional and "older" people
|
| As I said in a previous comments, older generation do not use
| WhatsApp very much as we had unlimited text message before
| getting internet on our phones (before iPhone 1). Before Covid,
| my parents did not use WhatsApp at all while texting daily.
| They use it now to video call during curfew
| jorislacance wrote:
| good call about 07 numbers being more attributed to youngers.
| I took the 06 range to maximize the chance to get
| valid/active numbers.
| gridder wrote:
| Hiding last seen is useless as the online status cannot be
| hidden. There are various apps that exploit this for money so
| you can stalk anybody...
| geek_at wrote:
| I love these short write-ups of security issues of things the
| company in charge does not think is a problem.
|
| I remember that the facebook messenger was leaking the same kind
| of data and facebook said it's not a bug and didn't change it.
| sdevonoes wrote:
| Why is this a "security" issue? People know that other people
| can see their "last seen" date, but usually they don't care so
| they left it. Hell, I leave it public as well. I couldn't care
| less about this tiny details.
|
| Now, if you tell me that by leaving public my "last seen" date,
| people can get more data about me (e.g., with whom I talk to),
| well then yes, I would call that a security issue.
| hellcow wrote:
| The most interesting part to me wasn't the technical details
| but rather the MAU, WAU, DAU stats at the end from random
| sample. Way fewer people than I would have expected use
| WhatsApp on a weekly basis.
| CiTyBear wrote:
| This is in France, where text messages were free (unlimited
| with your subscription) long ago before we had internet on
| our smartphone. Thus people use text message a lot and did
| use WhatsApp only to contact people outside from France
| Jiejeing wrote:
| Text messages were around EUR0.10 for most plans until
| 2012 though (due to the unlawful collusion of telcos).
| jorislacance wrote:
| Not in France actually, we mainly use WhatsApp as a main
| message app; nobody uses SMS nowadays
| seszett wrote:
| Well I do use SMS, as well as my friends and family in
| France.
|
| I use WhatsApp with Belgians (I live in Belgium) because
| SMS's are not free for them, and also for sharing photos
| because MMS is a mess.
| jorislacance wrote:
| true, my point is more about the tendency of using groups
| of people to quickly share. Which SMS does not do
| properly.
| jorislacance wrote:
| What was interesting in my writing is that a simple API
| request quota could be preventing me from scraping this much.
| edsouza wrote:
| Not sure why you are webscraping, there is a Whatsapp
| business API you can use to gather a lot more information.
|
| Here is a github repo that implements it, including
| generating text QR code.
|
| https://github.com/Rhymen/go-whatsapp
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| > if [...] people can get more data about me (e.g., with whom
| I talk to) [...]
|
| It's quite possible, at least among mutual friends. If you
| have 2 people you know, who are also friends with each other,
| who have high correlation of online times, then, it's a
| signal that they could be talking with each other.
|
| It's also amusing (insert a better verb...) that Facebook
| probably knows who's dating who based on frequency of
| messages on Messenger/WhatsApp/Instagram, location data
| ("It's the 3rd Friday night that their phones are close to
| each other in some venue"), and if they're on the same WiFi
| (A few hours later: "Well, it's 1AM, and after an hour of
| inactivity, James' phone is now connected to Jenny's WiFi,
| they did have their third date earlier...")
| Item_Boring wrote:
| Reminds me of this talk: Spiegel Mining at the C3
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YpwsdRKt8Q
| 3dee wrote:
| It's bad that this is happening, but from a developer standpoint
| it is also very easy to overlook things like this because most
| APIs are not aware of who the data is for.
|
| When an API always returns the `last_seen` field regardless of
| who is querying the data, it's very easy to make the mistake to
| present the data to someone who should not see it.
|
| That's also one of the reasons I think most CRUD APIs use bad
| practice because they always return all data on a READ and may
| always store all data on a CREATE or UPDATE.
|
| But.. a company like Facebook should know better. It seems they
| just don't care.
| luckylion wrote:
| > But.. a company like Facebook should know better. It seems
| they just don't care.
|
| I agree 100%. If it was a simple hobby project that somebody
| had hacked together, I'd agree that it might be easily
| overlooked. When you have thousands of people supposedly
| working on making privacy a priority etc: not so much.
| throw_away789 wrote:
| I think its deliberately kept open. There are 100s of apps in
| play store that can help in predicting if 2 people in your
| contacts are in conversation.
|
| People like keeping watch on others and Facebook is
| exploiting that.
| darkport wrote:
| I've always wanted to do something similar at scale. Generate all
| possible random mobile numbers 11^10, check if they have a
| WhatsApp profile pic and run it through AWS' rekognition
| celebrity model (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/rekognition/latest/d
| g/celebritie...). You could identify the personal numbers for a
| _lot_ of VIPs, politicians, etc.
| [deleted]
| rk1987 wrote:
| I really need "Permanently Archive Chat" feature in whatsapp.
| There are some chats/groups that I never want to see any message
| in but don't want to leave.
|
| I believe whatsapp knows how useful this feature is but it will
| lead to lower usage and they are not rolling out
| kwonkicker wrote:
| You can permanently mute a chat group
| hansel_der wrote:
| > There are some chats/groups that I never want to see any
| message in but don't want to leave.
|
| information age 2.0
| outime wrote:
| >Nobody uses Signal in France [from the 5000 sample]
|
| If one would've come to HN and read the last few months worth of
| posts you'd come to think that a lot of people from around the
| world moved to Signal. But then again this is a reminder about
| how little HN represents compared to the general population's
| tech choices.
| Grimm1 wrote:
| My anecdata but, my friend in France does and has been forever.
| That's how her and I keep in contact and video chat. Perhaps
| their sample wasn't representative.
| outime wrote:
| I'd say a sample of 5000 random phone numbers is more
| representative than individual comments from a community
| obsessed (in a positive way) with privacy.
| Grimm1 wrote:
| That's not my argument. My friend isn't privacy obsessed
| and not a part of this community.
| 0xcafecafe wrote:
| That signal move backfired for me. Before it was just whatsapp.
| Now with some folks from my generation moving to signal and the
| older folks from the parent's generation staying with whatsapp,
| I have had to maintain presence across 2 chat applications.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| Right now I'm maintaining:
|
| * Messenger for family and some friends * WhatsApp for group
| chats and most of my friends * SMS for older family members *
| Signal and Telegram for a select few privacy-conscious
| friends
|
| And at least one family member uses three of these, and it's
| a toss-up which one he'll use at any given time.
| Hallucinaut wrote:
| What's the actual cost here? You have one app open or
| another, no different to two distinct chatgroups in WhatsApp
| except for some small extra CPU cost for changing app focus
| if switching between them.
|
| The only issue I've seen is when I want to add someone who's
| only WhatsApp to a Signal chat, which has happened maybe
| twice until they also joined.
|
| Personally I feel good about taking even a small amount of
| Comms out of Zuckerberg's clutches
| GiveOver wrote:
| Compared to how many of those numbers have Whatsapp (1750),
| it's more popular than I'd have guessed. 1 Signal user for
| every 18 Whatsapp users
| toomanybeersies wrote:
| Any app that gives my peers even an inkling of what I'm doing
| without me explicitly sending that information gives me the
| heebie jeebies.
|
| I've gone back to using SMS for messaging these days. No more
| read receipts, no more "last active 10 minutes ago", no more
| "Alice is nearby!", and no more "you haven't messaged Bob in a
| while, send a message?".
|
| Sure SMS is insecure, but at least it doesn't drive me insane
| with all the bullshit of so many messaging apps.
| foo92691 wrote:
| Bad news about "plain SMS" -
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services
| Dumbdo wrote:
| And this is just the tip of the iceberg. As described in the
| article, you can avoid this by hiding your "last seen" status.
|
| But why use the "last seen" feature, if WhatsApp also has an
| "online" indicator? Funnily enough, that one can't be disabled
| and is visible to everyone! That has been criticized for over 5
| years now, with no reaction from whatsapp/FB.
|
| There was even a similar tool back in 2016 which used this
| "online" indicator instead, called WhatsSpy [0]. It's no longer
| maintained, but you can see screenshots of it on this old German
| article [1] or you might be able to find English articles as
| well.
|
| I don't know of any current tool which does this, but I'd guess
| there are a few out there, since it's so easy to do and can't be
| prevented.
|
| [0] https://github.com/jorik041/WhatsSpy-Public
|
| [1] https://www.heise.de/security/meldung/WhatsSpy-Beliebige-
| Wha...
| notdang wrote:
| Another big problem is that Whatsapp automatically previews the
| URLs, thus leaking the IP of the person. I could not find a way
| do disable link previews.
| lxgr wrote:
| Is there any chance that the client needs the online status for
| some internal optimization, e.g. in order to deliver messages for
| online contacts to a different server than those destined for
| offline contacts? I could imagine delivery paths to be quite
| different (one would be immediately passed through in-memory
| while the other would be stored in some database and potentially
| trigger mobile push notifications).
|
| In that case, it is nice to at least visually expose that this
| information is available to bad actors using custom clients too.
|
| However, this fails as a possible excuse ever since Facebook
| acquired WhatsApp, given that they have essentially unlimited
| resources available and could easily implement a privacy proxy to
| hide this information from clients.
| hiq wrote:
| In any case there cannot be a good reason to share the online
| status / last seen date before any interaction has happened
| between two contacts, and approved by the receiver.
|
| If you have had no interaction with someone, you should first
| accept a message (and not report it as spam) before this
| information is shared. Ideally that would be the default as
| well for the About field and the profile picture.
| lxgr wrote:
| I definitely agree - none of my hypotheses make for a _good_
| reason. I 'm just wondering if there's anything technical
| behind what seems to be a quite stubborn decision that also
| sticks out (as everything else has controllable privacy
| options).
|
| Another weird decision is that read receipts are not possible
| to be deactivated in group chats, but there is no explanation
| for that that I could think of (delivery receipts might be
| required for faster encryption key ratcheting, but the read
| status has no significance at all for the protocol).
| inasio wrote:
| I saw a very strange thing in Whatsapp last week. One of my
| contacts texted me their name in Cyrillic characters (Whatsapp on
| IOS), five seconds later I got an email to my Gmail inbox in
| russian. I check my spam folder occasionally (mostly bitcoin
| scams for some reason) and had never seen any messages in
| russian.
| giuscri wrote:
| that's creepy
| puttycat wrote:
| I've been using WhatsApp for years, reluctantly since it is the
| de-facto SMS standard in my country.
|
| I will never, ever, understand the "online" status feature. It is
| ridiculously invasive and cannot ever be turned off or even
| hidden from specific contacts. This is a SMS client, not a chat
| client, and revealing a user's online status is highly
| problematic both socially and security-wise. I can't help but
| wonder how many lives this feature has ruined.
|
| (I am talking specifically about the "online" indication, not the
| "last seen" information, which is also invasive but can be turned
| off).
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| Whatsapp has nothing to do with SMS? Why would you think so?
| georgiecasey wrote:
| > since it is the de-facto SMS standard in my country.
|
| Same in my country, I don't think Americans (or the American
| tech culture) realise how ubiquitous WhatsApp is in Europe and
| around the world.
| dkdbejwi383 wrote:
| In the UK, I've basically only used WhatsApp for sms-type
| communication for the past 4 years. Actual SMS is for one-
| time passcodes and automated messages from my bank and
| doctor.
|
| Previous to that, I was in Australia where practically nobody
| used WhatsApp, favouring iMessage or Facebook messenger.
|
| Messaging app adoption is highly localised.
| ryandrake wrote:
| There are a lot of things that are "ubiquitous" but I still
| wouldn't voluntarily use. Between this thread and the YouTube
| one today, and countless other ones in the recent past, there
| seem to be a growing number of "Xyz app is bad, but I won't
| stop using it" threads lately. I mean, talk about being part
| of the problem and not part of the solution. Whatever
| happened to "Be the change you want to see in the world?"
| ejolto wrote:
| I'm in a European country and no one uses whatsapp here. I
| have it but only to talk to foreing friends.
| harperlee wrote:
| > This is a SMS client, not a chat client
|
| That is a subjective take that's mainly in your head.
|
| WhatsApp is a client for chatting, so it is a chat client. It
| does not use the SMS network, so it is not an SMS client.
|
| Some countries such as US and France had free SMS services,
| that enabled it to be used as chat. Other places SMS being
| costly it was used as a "write ideally one message"
| functionality, similar to email (which only costs in other
| ways, in human time, but not in actual bills). You can see this
| in the design of the Messages app in iPhone for example.
| beckman466 wrote:
| > That is a subjective take that's mainly in your head.
|
| Wow that's gaslighty
| LambdaComplex wrote:
| It's gaslighty to say that a client that does not use SMS
| is not an SMS client?
| canadianfella wrote:
| How so?
| murukesh_s wrote:
| Not sure if its country wise or only in newer versions, but you
| can turn off last seen and read receipt as well. go to account
| -> privacy if its available or try to upgrade.
| mahathu wrote:
| > I can't help but wonder how many lives this feature has
| ruined
|
| I agree with your comment completely, but isn't this a bit a
| bit of an exaggeration?
| beckman466 wrote:
| > I agree with your comment completely, but isn't this a bit
| a bit of an exaggeration?
|
| No. Many global south countries like Brazil use WhatsApp
| instead of sms, and not being able to control what
| information you push out is therefore dangerous. As someone
| else wrote in this sub, you don't need to first 'friend' or
| link with someone on WhatsApp before they can see all your
| info (like how often and how long someone is online).
| Stalking and stalkers are more prevalent than you think.
| Nevermind that the situation is also different depending on
| your gender (women are stalked and victims of violence more
| than men).
|
| Also I think a few people here seem really concerned with
| whether its an SMS or an IM service, but I think that doesn't
| matter when you ask instead what's affordable and accessible
| to the average person in the global south. I think you'll
| find that sms and calls are usually luxuries reserved for the
| tiny minority in power).
| guenthert wrote:
| > women are stalked and victims of violence more than men
|
| This is going to be a bit off-topic now, but I'd say by
| violence above only physical violence is meant. If verbal
| and psychological abuse is included, the balance isn't
| quite so obvious.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| It does nothing but serve to increase paranoia that someone is
| actively being ignored.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| I only used WhatsApp for a year or so to talk to a specific
| person, but it definitely felt like a chat client to me. My
| general impression is that it is a lesser version of AIM but
| using phone numbers as logins. To be fair, I think of all
| instant messaging apps as lesser versions of AIM, and I still
| can't believe AOL dropped the ball so hard on that.
|
| I don't remember the online indication, is that only when
| you're actively using the app? or just if the app is open on
| your phone? I'm trying to think of a situation where either
| could ruin someones life but I'm struggling. Maybe if you're
| trying to avoid someone important to you, but need to talk to
| someone else on whats app? Could you give an example of what
| you were thinking?
| gridder wrote:
| When you are online anyone can check it. There is no option
| to hide the online status. Using an easy script anyone can
| then spy and understand pretty much everything of a person,
| or a group. This is easy cyber stalking and dangerous.
| Especially because normal people do not understand this and
| think that hiding last seen is useful to avoid being
| stalked...
| IneffablePigeon wrote:
| You can absolutely hide it - it's in the settings, as
| mentioned in the article. The tradeoff is you won't be able
| to see anyone else's status.
|
| I do agree I don't particularly like that it's on by
| default.
| peterjmag wrote:
| The parent commenter is talking about the "currently
| online" indicator, which can't be disabled. From a
| (strangely worded) WhatsApp doc:
|
| _> Please note you can 't hide your online._
|
| https://faq.whatsapp.com/general/chats/about-last-seen-
| and-o...
| Eun wrote:
| That's one of the reasons I jailbreaked my phone, to be
| able to control which app can access which data and when.
| zuppy wrote:
| your answer doesn't make any sense in this context. this
| is a standard whatsapp feature that can not be turned
| off. you can disable networking and open whatsapp and
| that flag will not be sent, but also your conversations
| won't get updated. jailbreaking doesn't change any of
| this.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| If you have root you could decrypt the traffic on the
| fly, and block any data that is not necessary for basic
| functionality. Maybe even run squid locally, and
| configure it there. I doubt that's what they meant, and
| it would take a bit of reverse engineering, but would be
| kind of fun.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| Do you mean any one of your contacts? or anyone who has
| your phone number? And I'm still confused about the
| definition of "online" and how that can give anyone an
| understanding of you.
| rpadovani wrote:
| Anyone with your number, and it reports when you have the
| application open. Assuming WhatsApp is the first and last
| app you open in the day (good morning and good night
| messages) you know how long a person sleeps, and this is
| only a very easy analysis you can do. I am sure you can
| find something more interesting recording when people
| open an app.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| OK, yeah I agree that should be configurable, or at least
| limited to contacts. Maybe it should only count as online
| if you're actively using the app instead of having it
| open in the background. I'm sure many people just have it
| open 24/7. If I still used it, I would want an option to
| only receive messages when I'm online.
| filoleg wrote:
| >Maybe it should only count as online if you're actively
| using the app instead of having it open in the background
|
| Not sure about desktop clients and not sure about what
| you mean by "open in the background" in this specific
| case, but I can answer this for mobile WhatsApp apps
| specifically. For those, it only tracks when you actually
| have the app open in your main view.
|
| More specifically, if you just have the app in the
| background while using some other app, it doesn't count
| as online. If someone sends you a WhatsApp message and
| you receive a notification but don't open the app itself,
| it doesn't count. Only when you actually open the app is
| when it shows you as being online.
|
| Personally, I agree with you that the simplest solution
| that would already resolve a ton of those issues is to
| simply only display your "online" status to those who you
| have added to your contact list (instead of to literally
| the entire world).
| temp667 wrote:
| " understand pretty much everything of a person, or a
| group."
|
| How does this work - does it leak status or location,
| messages, contact lists etc? We have a number of folks who
| are absolutely freaking out over how folks are being killed
| because of this - can someone walk us through how it leaks
| all this info?
|
| A quick note that I make my entire calendar public in terms
| of available times so that folks can schedule their time
| with me.
| young_unixer wrote:
| > We have a number of folks who are absolutely freaking
| out over how folks are being killed because of this
|
| I can totally see that happening:
|
| Person X suspects their partner is cheating on them with
| Person Y. So they start logging every time their partner
| is online and every time Person Y is online. Person X
| becomes obsessed with this theory of cheating and
| discovers a correlation between their online times,
| concluding that they're being cheated on, so they explode
| in rage and go kill their partner.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > I'm trying to think of a situation where either could ruin
| someones life but I'm struggling.
|
| Ruining someone's life might be hyperbole but people
| certainly notice when the people they're messaging are
| online. Especially when they send messages and are ignored.
| temp667 wrote:
| I can't help but wondering how many lives WhatsApp has helped.
|
| And it is definitely NOT an SMS client. The entire reason it
| has become so popular is that it does not use SMS. Before
| WhatsApp - the govt in these countries - supposedly looking out
| for the common good - allowed telecom carriers (usually giant
| oligarchs) to charge OBSENE per msg rates.
| guenthert wrote:
| I do remember when SMS where actually free in Germany (where
| customarily telecoms charge you an arm & a leg). This led to
| people carrying mobile phones (era before smart phones), but
| only ever used SMS. You've seen them 'simsen' in bars, coffee
| shops, everywhere. Looked quite funny then (even though we
| appreciated that they stopped talking loudly on their phones
| all the time everywhere). I still can't quite get used to the
| view of people with a screen glued to their face.
| guru4consulting wrote:
| you can turn on airplane mode, quickly check whatsapp messages,
| get out and turn off airplane mode. It is a dirty hack, but it
| also helps you to spend minimal time on whatsapp.
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| > I will never, ever, understand the "online" status feature.
|
| Fun fact: WhatsApp was initially just that i.e. It showed
| status of its users online and people started using it to share
| messages leading up to the development of full-fledged chat
| app.
|
| We may be from the same country, Where peer pressure to have a
| WhatsApp account is so high that friends and relatives get
| offended if you don't have one.
|
| So I have isolated WhatsApp to a android VM, it sends me an
| encrypted email of the incoming messages, lets know the sender
| the same and that they need to message me on Signal if expect
| faster reply[1].
|
| [1] https://abishekmuthian.com/send-and-receive-whatsapp-
| message...
| peterjmag wrote:
| Totally agreed that it's invasive. Same for the "typing"
| indicator, which also can't be disabled. If I'm writing
| something longer than a sentence or two, I usually just compose
| it somewhere else and then copy/paste it into WhatsApp, just to
| avoid feeling observed.
|
| The fact that those two things can't be disabled actually makes
| me want to use WhatsApp less. I doubt I'm alone in that. Makes
| me wonder if Facebook's "engagement" stats account for those
| types of disincentives.
| sdiq wrote:
| I also type elsewhere and copy paste to Whatsapp anytime I am
| writing something longer than a couple lines. I have also
| disabled the last seen feature. The currently online status
| seem way worse than last seen and can't be disabled.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| With Android phones you could possibly use an app like NoRoot
| Firewall to cut off net access for the app when you want to
| appear offline. Unfortunately that's a pretty "advanced" use of
| apps for the average consumer and definitely not a replacement
| for building this in natively.
| mahathu wrote:
| Or turn on airplane mode
| NotEvil wrote:
| Actually pointless as online status is shown when you open
| the app.
|
| And you have to do that fir checking messages.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| Depends on your reasons for showing offline. If offline is
| a proxy for "I am not here to check and respond to
| messages", such as when you're sleeping, quite useful. If
| not, and you'd prefer to be constantly offline for privacy
| reasons, less useful.
| livre wrote:
| You don't "show offline" in WhatsApp, either "online"
| appears below the contact name or nothing appears.
| Nothing doesn't mean offline, it means the person doesn't
| have WhatsApp running in the foreground, they could or
| could not be online (which most define as "using or not
| using the phone right now").
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| It was a euphemism, but good clarification! Colloquially
| you can interpret the lack of online-ness as offline.
| m_st wrote:
| I totally agree. Except that I very much call it a chat client.
| It is way beyond SMS.
| kzrdude wrote:
| It's sms that is way behind the needs of chat :)
| throw_away789 wrote:
| > I can't help but wonder how many lives this feature has
| ruined.
|
| and relationships
| mahathu wrote:
| This seems like a stretch to me. I agree this feature is
| unnecessary and invasive. But why would it destroy
| relationships?
| mcjiggerlog wrote:
| It doesn't take much imagination to come up with a
| hypothetical scenario. Person is writing to their partner
| but receiving no reply, however they can see that their
| partner has been online for the past 30 minutes. Person is
| convinced that their partner is talking to that one guy
| from the gym.
|
| I have definitely been called out for being online but not
| replying, so I can easily imagine how that can end up
| becoming a big drama in some relationships.
| crocsarecool wrote:
| Maybe you have a crazy manager. They see you were online
| when you were meant to be working. They use this to justify
| their thoughts you're lazy. Who knows?
| vxNsr wrote:
| The general consensus here seems to be, let me hide from my
| friends and family. All the comments are focused on how annoying
| it is that Facebook is generously sharing information that you
| might not otherwise think they were collecting about you.
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