{"id":94667,"date":"2017-10-25T09:17:43","date_gmt":"2017-10-25T09:17:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sftarticles.wpenginepowered.com\/en\/?p=94667"},"modified":"2025-07-01T23:45:06","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T06:45:06","slug":"a-whatsapp-web-error-allows-spying-on-contacts-habits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/a-whatsapp-web-error-allows-spying-on-contacts-habits\/","title":{"rendered":"A WhatsApp Web Error Allows Spying on Contacts\u2019 Habits"},"content":{"rendered":"

WhatsApp Web has an error that allows anybody with certain a computer know-how, to partially spy on you. By partially I mean that he\/she can find out <\/span>when you go to bed and when you get up.<\/b><\/p>\n

Engineer Rob Heaton has discovered this error and shared it on his blog. The error is the <\/span>legendary \u201conline\u201d status <\/b>that is visible when you\u2019re connected. You can disable the time you were last online so it no longer displays, but the \u201conline\u201d status can\u2019t be removed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rob Heaton demonstrates, on his blog, how easy it is to <\/span>create a Chrome extension in order to monitor<\/b> every time a contact from your WhatsApp appears \u201conline.\u201d Then, you leave your computer turned on with WhatsApp Web enabled, get on with your life and within a few hours, or even a week, you can come back and see the results.<\/span><\/p>\n

The <\/span>code<\/b> that<\/span> the extension needs to collect everybody’s connectivity times is very straightforward:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

By knowing the last time that a WhatsApp contact was \u201conline\u201d the day before and the first time that he\/she was \u201conline\u201d the next day, <\/span>you\u2019ll know more or less how many hours they slept. <\/b>This way, a jealous person could find out if his\/her partner has a busier nightlife than they’re letting on, so to speak.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Heaton goes one step further and even explains that with this info it would be easy to know <\/span>when two people are talking to each other.<\/b> Their connectivity times would just have to match.<\/span><\/p>\n

The danger here isn\u2019t just that an ordinary person could use this, but also <\/span>somebody with more malicious intentions<\/b> could gather all this info and sell it to third parties.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear if Heaton has passed along his findings to WhatsApp<\/b> to prevent this info from being given away by WhatsApp Web.<\/span><\/p>\n

Do you think this is a huge mistake or no big deal?<\/b><\/p>\n

Sources: <\/span>Robert Heaton\u2019s blog<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>El Confidencial<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WhatsApp Web has an error that allows anybody with certain a computer know-how, to partially spy on you. By partially I mean that he\/she can find out when you go to bed and when you get up. Engineer Rob Heaton has discovered this error and shared it on his blog. The error is the legendary … Continue reading “A WhatsApp Web Error Allows Spying on Contacts\u2019 Habits”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2041,"featured_media":94783,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":4},"categories":[2441],"tags":[2549],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[],"class_list":["post-94667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-how-to","tag-app-subdomain-redirectionwhatsapp-web"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2041"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94667"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":328491,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94667\/revisions\/328491"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94667"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=94667"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=94667"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=94667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}