Thousands of users report problems with WhatsApp as the messaging service suffers a technical glitch
- Issue with WhatsApp is causing user’s ‘last seen’ status to appear hidden
- The feature allows users to decide who can see when they were last active
- Error message appears if users try and change the setting back to ‘everyone’
Thousands of WhatsApp users have discovered an issue with the messaging app this afternoon, as it not showing contacts when they were last seen.
The feature allows people to decide who can see when they were last active on the app, with “everyone” as the default option.
There is also the option to set the last seen as contacts only or for nobody to be able to see it.
Users of the Facebook-owned app began reporting that their “last seen” had switched from “everyone” to “nobody” without their knowledge.
Thousands of WhatsApp users have been able to use the ‘last seen’ feature of the app today
Ruchika Rajpal took to Twitter to raise the issue, writing: ‘There’s a glitch in WhatsApp servers. We cannot see anyone’s last seen time, online or typing status. Wouldn’t even have noticed it if my mom wouldn’t have bugged me for an hour about this.’
In addition, people are unable to change it back to “everyone” – any attempt to revert last seen prompts a message reading: “WhatsApp was not able to change privacy setting. Please try again later.”
When users have the last seen status set to “nobody”, it restricts them for seeing when anyone else was on the app last too.
The glitch appears to have affected the ability to see when a person is in the process of typing back, which usually informs users at the top of the app.
According to the Down Detector self-reporting website, the largest volume of issue reports seem be clustered around Europe, though people from across the world seem to be raising the problem on Twitter.
WhatsApp was approached for comment on the matter.