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For years, Facebook has refused to turn off a function that facilitates stalking via WhatsApp.
A “feature” that cannot be switched off makes stalking via WhatsApp child’s play. And although the operator Facebook has known the problem for years, the company shows little effort to intervene here for the benefit of the privacy of its users.
It’s about displaying the online status of users. This must not be confused with the «Status», which allows you to display text, photos or video for 24 hours, or with the «Last Online» status – both can be deactivated. The online status, however, is not. Anyone who knows a target’s phone number can see if they are online. It is not even necessary to be in that person’s address book.
Stalking services do the work
This feature offers significant potential for stalking. Because with it you can follow the course of the day of another person pretty precisely and in some cases even deduce with whom they were in contact. And you don’t even have to stare at WhatsApp for hours and wait for the “online” message to appear in the chat window with the target person. There are already several services online that do this for stalkers.
The security company Traced did describedhow such services work. Stalkers simply have to enter their victim’s phone number – whether or not they have blocked them is irrelevant. The services then use WhatsApp that is always active to monitor the phone numbers supplied and log the times when they are displayed as “online”. This effectively duplicates the “last online” function mentioned, without a victim being able to do anything about it.
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Perfect for ex-partner stalking
A use in real life is easy to imagine. A stalker could suspect that the ex-partner is now having something with his best buddy. Then he simply enters both of their phone numbers into such a stalking service. If the two people are constantly online on WhatsApp at the same times, it is almost certain to conclude that they are in contact. Some of the services mentioned are promoting such use for their product.
Facebook said «Motherboard» that it has identified some of the stalking services and blocked their WhatsApp accounts. But a company that doesn’t want to have noticed that it has lost 500 million phone numbers shouldn’t be expected to be able to counter these services permanently.
WhatsApp explains on its website that there is no way to hide the online status display. If you want to prevent stalking, you only have two options: Either to change the phone number and hope that the stalker does not know it again. Or delete WhatsApp entirely and switch to an alternative messenger.
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