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.
Tracking the WhatsApp habits of random smartphones
61–70 of 120 posts
Re: Tracking the WhatsApp habits of random smartphones
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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.
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.
Re: Tracking the WhatsApp habits of random smartphones
#63I 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
You can permanently mute a chat group
Re: Tracking the WhatsApp habits of random smartphones
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually pointless as online status is shown when you open the app. And you have to do that fir checking messages.
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.
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").
Re: Tracking the WhatsApp habits of random smartphones
#65I 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.
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Re: Tracking the WhatsApp habits of random smartphones
#66I 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.
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...
Nice work !
Re: Tracking the WhatsApp habits of random smartphones
#67I 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
> There are some chats/groups that I never want to see any message in but don't want to leave.
information age 2.0
Re: Tracking the WhatsApp habits of random smartphones
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
What was interesting in my writing is that a simple API request quota could be preventing me from scraping this much.
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.
Re: Tracking the WhatsApp habits of random smartphones
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I can't help but wonder how many lives this feature has ruined. and relationships
This seems like a stretch to me. I agree this feature is unnecessary and invasive. But why would it destroy relationships?
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?
Re: Tracking the WhatsApp habits of random smartphones
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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").
It was a euphemism, but good clarification! Colloquially you can interpret the lack of online-ness as offline.