{"id":32137,"date":"2021-04-15T14:30:15","date_gmt":"2021-04-15T18:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=32137"},"modified":"2021-04-15T14:31:46","modified_gmt":"2021-04-15T18:31:46","slug":"how-a-whatsapp-status-loophole-is-aiding-cyberstalkers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2021\/04\/15\/how-a-whatsapp-status-loophole-is-aiding-cyberstalkers\/","title":{"rendered":"How a WhatsApp Status Loophole Is Aiding Cyberstalkers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/traced.app\/2021\/04\/13\/whatsapp-status-loophole-is-aiding-cyberstalkers\/\">Louisa Stockley<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/traced.app\/2021\/04\/13\/whatsapp-status-loophole-is-aiding-cyberstalkers\/\">\n<p>According to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.statista.com\/\">Statista<\/a>, WhatsApp is the world&rsquo;s most popular messaging app, with over two billion active monthly users. In the UK it&rsquo;s present on 58% of smartphones and the number of WhatsApp users in the US is expected to hit 86 million by 2023. <\/p>\n<p>When someone comes online in WhatsApp (that is, they open the app or bring it to the foreground), an indicator changes, setting their status to &ldquo;<strong>Online<\/strong>&rdquo;. This indicator is public information, and can be used by anyone to build a service that watches out for this online status indicator.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>WhatsApp has other privacy-focused features in the app, so they clearly care about protecting their users at some level. In fact, one of the privacy features allows a user to hide their &ldquo;Last Seen&rdquo; time. Some users might understandably believe that this feature hides their presence, but it actually does very little to protect privacy.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2021\/04\/09\/why-theres-no-imessage-for-android\/\">Why There&rsquo;s No iMessage for Android<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Louisa Stockley: According to Statista, WhatsApp is the world&rsquo;s most popular messaging app, with over two billion active monthly users. In the UK it&rsquo;s present on 58% of smartphones and the number of WhatsApp users in the US is expected to hit 86 million by 2023. When someone comes online in WhatsApp (that is, they [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2021-04-15T18:30:19Z","apple_news_api_id":"5de5718b-6b03-4fe5-8733-fa9648329cc1","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2021-04-15T18:31:50Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AXeVxi2sDT-WHM_qWSDKcwQ","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[31,1837,26,355,1363],"class_list":["post-32137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-ios","tag-ios-14","tag-iosapp","tag-privacy","tag-whatsapp"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32137"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32147,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32137\/revisions\/32147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}