Learn How to Hide WhatsApp 'Last seen at' Time and Profile Picture from Other Users

WhatsApp for Android added most awaited privacy option for all who do not want to display information about when they last used the app.

This is the first impressive update of the WhatsApp after acquisition by Facebook, who has paid a lot of money in cash and stock to acquire it.

The Popular Smartphone messaging application WhatsApp version 2.11.169 will provide you more ability and control over privacy options i.e. Hiding ‘last seen at’ time, Profile picture, status updates from others, which are currently visible for all WhatsApp users.

Currently, these options are set to 'everyone' by default, that allows any WhatsApp user to find out exactly when you used WhatsApp for the last time, also reveals your image and Status message. Most of the times we don't want it to be shown to anyone or to non-contact users.

How to hide WhatsApp 'last seen at' time and Profile Picture?
WhatsApp now allows you to Modify your Privacy settings in three ways:

1. Show to 'Everyone'
2. Show to 'My Contacts'
3. Show to 'Nobody'

To Apply, Open your WhatsApp Settings -> Account -> Privacy and here you can set your Privacy settings as you wish.

So, if you set all the options to 'My Contacts', then only your phone contacts can see your 'last seen  at' time, profile picture and Status, and no one else would have these visibility available.

The WhatsApp's Founder said in a statement:

"There would have been no partnership between our two companies (Facebook and Whatsapp) if we had to compromise on the core principles that will always define our company, our vision and our product."

I wish, the company keeps doing great work for the users' privacy and Security.

How to Get the latest version before official release?

It is not known that the same has been released for other platforms or not, at the time of writing the article. The Latest version update has not yet rolled out via Google Play Store, but users can manually download and install it from WhatsApp's Official website.

Why You need to Stop using WhatsApp?

If you haven’t heard by now, Facebook just made its biggest move ever, buying the messaging serviceWhatsApp in a deal worth some $19 billion. That’s 19 times what Facebook paid for Instagram two years ago.

The WhatsApp Service run by the team of just 32 engineers, handles more than 50 Billion messages daily, and approx 385 million active users.

WhatsApp acquisition has also brought out fresh criticism over security for the billions of messages delivered on the platform. Security Researcher at Praetorian Labs identified several SSL-related security issues in WhatsApp application using Project Neptune, a mobile application security testing platform.

"WhatsApp communication between your phone and our server is fully encrypted. We do not store your chat history on our servers. Once delivered successfully to your phone, chat messages are removed from our system." Company said in a blog post.

But researchers found that WhatsApp is vulnerable to Man-in-theMiddle attack because the app has not enforced SSL pinning and hence user credentials can be easily stolen. SSL pinning prevents the user of the application from being a victim of an attack made by spoofing the SSL certificate. SSL pinning won't prove a great solution is not validated properly.

"WhatsApp does not perform SSL pinning when establishing a trusted connection between the mobile applications and back-end web services. Without SSL pinning enforced, an attacker could man-in-the-middle the connection between the mobile applications and back-end web services. This would allow the attacker to sniff user credentials, session identifiers, or other sensitive information."

WhatsApp is allowing its backend servers to use weak 40-bit and 56-bit encryption schemes, which can be easily cracked using brute force attack. 'This is the kind of stuff the NSA would love,' researchers said.

WhatsApp team has confirmed that they are actively working on adding SSL Pinning to their app, but still that is not enough to protect our privacy.

Facebook and WhatsApp assured that nothing is going to change after the acquisition and WhatsApp will continue to function as an independent service, but is that statement satisfied? May be we can trust Facebook, Google, WhatsApp.. But we really can't trust the U.S. Government  and the Security agencies like the NSA, that don't respect our privacy and freedom of speech.

Mobile messaging apps often used to deliver sensitive data or used for personal and corporate communications, so the data stored by the service provider should be encrypted end-to-end, which is not yet in the case of WhatsApp.

But there are many other free secure chat applications are available like Telegram, Surespot, Threema, TextSecure, RedPhone etc., that you should use to keep your data private and Secure, until WhatsApp will not adopt end-to-end encryption.

5 Best WhatsApp alternatives with end-to-end Encryption

WhatsApp acquisition may have had a negative impact on the reputation of the company, it seems many users are planning to switch the service and a few of them have already done it.

In our previous article, we have mentioned that why you should switch from WhatsApp to an encrypted Chat messaging service.

Mobile messaging apps often used to deliver sensitive data or used for personal and corporate communications, so the data stored by the service provider should be encrypted end-to-end, which is not yet in the case of WhatsApp.

There are many mobile messaging applications like Japan-based Line, China’s WeChat, Korea-based KakaoTalk, and Canada’s Kik, India-based Hike and many more, but they are not end-to-end encrypted messengers.

Time is loudly announcing the need to shift to some alternates which provides end-to-end encryption for communication between two devices and respect your Privacy. There are a number of solutions available includes - Telegram, Surespot, Threema, TextSecure, RedPhone etc.

1.) Telegram offers end-to-end encryption and have a 'Secret Chat' feature, that self-destruct messages after the conversation. The company is offering $200,000 Prize in Bitcoin to the first person to crack its Encryption.

"We support two layers of secure encryption (server-client and client-client). Our encryption is based on 256-bit symmetric AES encryption, RSA 2048 encryption and Diffie–Hellman secure key exchange." Company states on their website.

Regular and Secret chats are encrypted, but during Secret chat no data stored on the company server.

There are a couple of more advantages Telegram brings which really are interesting. Telegram is free and an open source project, which means that the source code of the project is freely available, and according to their official website, 'Telegram has an open API and protocol free for everyone'.

Download Telegram for Android and iOS.

2.) Surespot allows you to send and receive text messages, pictures and audio clip with end-to-end encryption. It uses 256 bit AES-GCM encryption using keys created with 521 bit ECDH which can only be decrypted by sender and receiver.

Unlike WhatsApp, if you delete a message, it's deleted from the recipient's phone, too. Surespot supports multiple identities on a single device. Download Surespot for Android and iOS.

 

3.) Threema is not free, but a perfect alternate for WhatsApp, use end-to-end encryption and gives you all features of WhatsApp like text messaging, image sharing, and voice chat as well.

You can also sync your contact list automatically and manually. German users have started a shift to Threema after Facebook's acquisition and the app have become top paid app on the app store in Germany. Download Threema for iOS and Android.

4.) TextSecure and 5.) RedPhone also provides end-to-end encryption for messaging and voice calls respectively. RedPhone allows you to upgrade a normal call to secure call whenever it senses the possibility to fulfil the requirements.

TextSecure encrypts the messages stored locally, making your information hard to leak even if you lost your device. Download TextSecure for Android and Download RedPhone for Android.

So, if you are also now planning to switch, get any of above best suitable mobile messaging application for you.