The WhatsApp privacy problem.

TL:DR Use WhatsApp at your own risk.

WhatsApp has a privacy problem, and the UX has annoying gaps.

Exposed Activity Log

A WhatsApp client for Android devices allows anyone to maintain a log of online status of any arbitrary contact number.

This can be used to track in a significant way and there is no way for users to protect themselves from this, except abandoning whatsapp altogether.

Even, deleting user contacts are logged.

The beauty of this is, the victim can be using the official WhatsApp client for android, and would never know that his/her activities are being tracked by her/his exes.

User XP

Not being able to archive or truly mute a group

Anytime you archive a group or mute it, you still keep seeing message count badges and the group getting auto unarchived as soon as a new message is sent. The only way is to leave a group, or abandon whatsapp altogether

Read receipts on voice messages

You can’t turn off read receipts on voice messages, ever. That totally defeats the purposes of disabling read receipts.

All you need to do is send a user a voice message to see if they are checking you messages. Surprisingly enough, it’s listed as an expected behavior on their FAQ page. The only solution is to abandon whatsapp altogether

So,

WhatsApp fails not only at protecting its users’ privacy, but also at providing a consistent UX.

Thanks.