Be careful what you post in your WhatsApp statuses, as anyone can now see them.
One of the distinguishing features of WhatsApp statuses was that they were only visible to your contacts, but this appears to be changing soon.
WhatsApp appears to no longer require both users to be in each other's contact lists for status updates to appear.
A recent interaction between users, such as a message or a phone call, will suffice, allowing people who are not in your contact list to see your updates.
Up until now, the only exceptions to this rule have been your privacy settings, direct referral, or referral to a group within the status, but that has been the general rule.
Meanwhile, WhatsApp continues to develop its "Close Friends" feature, which allows you to select a small group of people to share your status updates with. It's similar to Instagram's "Close Friends" feature.
So, if you have someone's phone number saved and have recently interacted with them on WhatsApp, that person will be able to receive your status updates even if they don't have your number saved. However, if you don't have that number saved, that person won't receive your status updates.
Therefore, the requirement to save the contact does not disappear completely, but it becomes more flexible.
Additionally, WhatsApp will add visual indicators to make it easier for users to distinguish status updates from unsaved numbers. In these cases, the name associated with that account will appear alongside the phone number, as shown below.
The idea is that if two people have spoken before, it makes sense to assume they have a common interest.
But we somewhat disagree with this idea, as it is possible for two people to interact and then one of them loses interest, or for one of them to try to deceive the other via WhatsApp and enter into a conversation.
Of course, in these cases you can always block the number, but we see that a rule that was clear has become somewhat vague.
Another detail that emerged is that WhatsApp will not record recent interactions to determine whether a status update can be viewed from an unsaved account. All of this will be done directly on the user's device to protect their privacy.
Furthermore, a control tool will be available that enables users to hide status updates from accounts they have recently interacted with but are not interested in, without having to block the contact.
As confirmed, hiding status updates does not permanently delete them; it only removes them from the home screen. Users can view them through the contact's profile or the "Hidden Statuses" section and can unhide them at any time.
For some time now, WhatsApp has wanted to give the app a more social networking feel through usernames and other features, and this new feature seems to be moving in that direction as well.
In fact, months ago, WhatsApp was finalizing a feature that would allow users to connect with others without needing their phone number. Usernames would enable users to communicate with each other without requiring a phone number.
However, this feature, which allows anyone to view WhatsApp status updates, is not available to everyone yet; it has only reached a limited number of users, and its rollout appears to be gradual in some countries.