jannux wrote:
WA does not have its own phone book, so I think that a deleted contact in the phone book is also deleted in WA and thus disappears from the database where the blocked status is stored.
No, that is not the case.
In order to block a contact in WA, it must first be saved as a contact in the address book.
If the contact is then blocked, he or she will appear in WA on the “Blocked List” under the name as saved in the address book/phone book.
If the contact is now deleted from the mobile phone book, the same thing happens in WhatsApp as with the respective contacts in the chat list: they all remain, only the name of the respective contact is then simply changed to the respective mobile phone number.
The same thing happens with contacts on the block list: they usually remain blocked there, but WhatsApp can no longer assign the number to a name/contact in the address book and therefore only shows the respective cell phone number as blocked (I have quite a few blocked “cell phone numbers” on the block list and now I don’t even know who I actually blocked because the contacts are no longer in the address book).
However, none of this should have any effect on any contact you might have with the blocked contact – in other words, a blocked contact should still not be able to contact you, regardless of whether they are actually in your address book or not.
It would be news to me that a contact would disappear from all WA lists/settings after being deleted from the address book – because that would also mean that the written chats would suddenly be gone just because a contact was not saved. And that has never been the case, at least not up to now.
I can’t say whether anything has changed since the latest WA update – it would all be new to me anyway…