How your WhatsApp status may be used by your ex-partner to stalk you

While WhatsApp is a private tool to let users communicate only with consent, WhatsApp status posts may be used by stalkers to track you without your consent. There are dedicated apps to track WhatsApp status posts of users that can be used by stalkers to gain insights.

“When someone comes online in WhatsApp (that is, they open the app or bring it to the foreground), an indicator changes, setting their status to “Online”.

This indicator is public information, and can be used by anyone to build a service that watches out for this online status indicator,” says a report by cybersecurity firm Traced.

While privacy on WhatsApp is very basic, the cybersecurity firm claims that these WhatsApp status tracker apps can prove to be a useful tool for stalkers. “You can enter any mobile phone number, and if that person uses WhatsApp, the status tracker will provide the exact date and time that person opened WhatsApp,” it said.

These trackers are made to help people spy on their spouses to check whether or not they are cheating. Most apps are advertised accordingly. However, the reality is these can provide easy intel to ex-partners and disgruntled people to stalk victims.

“Some WhatsApp status trackers take this constant monitoring of another person’s online status to another level. Enter a second phone number, and you can cross-reference the times each person opened WhatsApp to see if they may be messaging each other,” it said.

One of the basic privacy settings that users must ensure is to turn off WhatsApp Status visibility for the public and only allow people in your contact list to see them. But some trackers are pretty intrusive to even bypass such settings. Another aspect of stalking is getting information about when the victim was last seen online.

Now, there’s no in-built settings in WhatsApp that would prevent such trackers to prevent your abuser. The easiest way to prevent such tracking is by changing the phone number altogether for the WhatsApp account.

Some trackers claim to even provide location access of victims. While trackers are becoming sophisticated, WhatsApp users can protect themselves by sharing less private information about themselves publicly.