WhatsApp has enabled new privacy measures preventing unknown contacts to see a user's last seen and online status.
The new privacy measures will prevent unknown contacts to get a user's last seen and the online status if they have never chatted with them.
Some users have noticed the change, being unable to see the last seen of some contacts and business accounts.
As reported by WABetaInfo , the WhatsApp customer support explained that this is a measure to improve privacy and security on the platform that will make it harder for people that users haven't chatted with and don't know to see their last seen and online presence.
This will also protect users from third party apps from seeing when they are online.
Seperately, WhatsApp is also working on a feature that will enable users to restrict certain information including their 'Last Seen' and profile picture from specific contacts for more privacy.
As spotted by WABetaInfo , the feature had been rolling out to some beta testers last month.
The Meta owned messaging platform is testing the feature that provides users more control over their privacy, enabling them to restrict who can see their Last Seen, About, Profile Photo on WhatsApp.
Currently, users can restrict their ‘Status’ from specific contacts.
With the new beta, when a user excludes certain contacts from seeing their last seen, theil.will not be able to see their last seen as well, as it happens currently. Currently,users can choose to hide this information all together. However, if they do so, they cannot see the last seen option for their contacts as well.