Periodically, unfortunately, new apps are published to meet a specific “need”: spying on someone for free on WhatsApp. These are apps that tell us when a user connects to WhatsApp, for how long and, in some cases, such apps are even found on Google’s Play Store.
Google, periodically, cleans up these spy apps for online stalkers but they are then uploaded to alternative stores or the developers’ website, in the form of Apk files to download and install on their own. The truth, then, is that if someone wants to spy on us on WhatsApp unfortunately has several options to do so, all free. Of course, they will never know with whom we are chatting, but they will know that we have chatted all day, from X hours to Y hours. And that’s enough, in the mind of a stalker, to trigger dangerous reactions. For this reason, those who have to do with such people, would do better to use a few more precautions.
How not to be spied on WhatsApp
All WhatsApp spy apps are based on the same principle: you enter a phone number to be spied on and they track all the activity statuses related to that number. Which are public, at least until we decide to hide them. You can do this by launching the WhatsApp app (both Android and iOS, the operation is the same), tapping on the icon with the three dots in the upper right corner and entering Settings. Then you have to choose “Account” and then “Privacy”. At this point, in the screen that will appear, we have to tap on “Last Access” and a pop up will open with three options: “All”, “My Contacts” and “None”. Since sometimes we don’t even know that we’re being spied on by one of our contacts, we’ll have to choose “None”.
The limitations of hiding last access
Making the choice to hide our last access on WhatsApp won’t be painless: it will also bring us limitations. WhatsApp, in fact, has a “symmetrical” policy on this option: if others cannot see our last access and if we are online, we will not be able to see this information on others either. Sometimes, though, it’s the best choice.
WhatsApp could solve the problem
To be fair, though, the solution that saves goats and cabbages would be there: WhatsApp could prevent automatic tracking of contacts’ status. If it did, spying on WhatsApp automatically would be impossible: the hypothetical stalker would have to stand in front of WhatsApp all day to manually gather all the information he can now collect with a free app. Unfortunately, however, this change does not currently seem to be in WhatsApp’s plans.