In WhatsApp’s privacy options, you can more or less precisely choose who can see your last connection time, profile photo, information, and status, but there is one very important thing that is beyond users’ control: who can see when you are online.

For starters, although the app started limiting it last year, it can still see if you’re online, whether it’s among your contacts, without leaving any choice to the user. Now we finally find out via WaBetaInfo we can choose in privacy options Who can see that we are online at the time?

The option that should have been from the start

All messaging apps that can show that someone is online hide status. This is nothing new, it already existed in messaging apps of past years like MSN Messenger. Despite this, WhatsApp has ignored this in its 13-year history.

Although WhatsApp allows us to control who can see our last connection time, current connection status (i.e. whether you are online or not) public. This has been the cornerstone of WhatsApp spy apps that constantly query a person’s status to create a map of when they are using the app. This major privacy issue seems close to finally being resolved.

In late 2021, we learned that WhatsApp began limiting who can see online status, making it “difficult for people you don’t know and chat with to see your last online time and online status.” Working on the app now a privacy setting so you can choose who sees your link.

The setting is not yet active for users and will be in the limelight with the last connection time setting. Moreover, it will have only two settings: All or “same as last connection time”. That way, you can choose between being seen by the whole world, your connections, the world except some people, or no one, but in sync with the last connection time.

via | WaBetaInfo