Similar to Instagram and other social media, you can view the “status” of contacts on WhatsApp – but be careful: the creator sees who has viewed the status. With these tricks you can remain anonymous when viewing the status of your contacts.
Creators can see who viewed the status
“In Status, you can share end-to-end encrypted texts, photos, videos, and GIFs that disappear after 24 hours. To send and receive status updates from your contacts, you and your contacts must back up each other’s phone numbers in your phone’s address book.” This is how WhatsApp describes how the status function works, which Messenger introduced a few years ago as well as other social media (e.g. Instagram or Facebook). Sometimes, however, you not only have good friends, but also exes, your former best friend or other contacts in your address book. If these haven’t been deleted either, it’s tempting to check every now and then to see what old friends and acquaintances are up to. This may not be a problem for either side – or you may prefer to remain anonymous. Because with the normal settings the creator of the status can see who has viewed the shared media, this requires a little trick.
Four ways to view WhatsApp status anonymously
There are several ways to remain anonymous while viewing a WhatsApp status. The simplest solution is probably to deactivate the read receipts – this way the status creator can no longer see whether you have viewed the shared media. The disadvantage of this method, however, is that you can no longer see who is viewing your status and you can no longer use the blue ticks in chats to see whether a message has already been read. Alternatively, you can also view the status of the contacts in the web browser. To do this, open it in incognito mode, navigate to WhatsApp Web and open the status overview. If you go offline, you can view the status anonymously – but only the writing is clearly visible and the image remains blurry.
It is much more complicated, but also possible, to switch your cell phone to airplane mode, view the status, delete the WhatsApp application, then go online again and then reinstall the app. The information portal Chip.de has a less complicated tip: If you enter the path “WhatsApp\Media\.Statuses.” in the file explorer on the device. searches, you can also view the status of the contacts – outside of the app and therefore anonymously. According to Chip.de, each status is automatically saved on the device.
Olga Rogler, editorial team at finanzen.net