WhatsApp is working on a feature that will give iOS users the ability to hide their online status from everyone. This function will come in a future update, and it’s already in development, reports WABetaInfo.
However, there are times when you just need to go invisible on WhatsApp. There are times when you need to hide your online status or just appear offline when using WhatsApp. Or just want to avoid someone seeing your ‘Last Seen’ on the platform. You easily appear offline on WhatsApp while using the application.
“Last year, WhatsApp started automatically hiding the last seen to contacts you never chatted with, in order to prevent third-party apps from monitoring our last seen and online status. Unfortunately, people that we already chatted with could still see when we were online but thanks to the new privacy setting “who can see when I’m online”, they won’t be able to do it anymore.
Hiding your Last Seen status or leaving it for everyone to see is a question of how private you want to keep your WhatsApp account. WhatsApp used to set your Last Seen status visibility to Everyone by default, meaning every user on the platform could access this information. This also allowed third-party apps to exploit this feature and track certain users through WhatsApp.
You can make use of this new update even if you’re not at all concerned about other people tracking your online presence on WhatsApp. On the contrary, you might want your friends or loved ones to know when you were last seen online. In that case, you can set your Last Seen status to My Contacts Except and only leave the people that you trust unselected.
WhatsApp is also reportedly working on a new feature that will allow users to put in an appeal in case their account has been blocked due to any reason. WhatsApp deletes or suspends accounts in bulk every day for users who do not comply with the terms and conditions of the platform. These messages can also be deleted via an automated system. Hence, there are chances that it might delete accounts mistakenly as well.
