This information is still visible

There are good reasons to delete a WhatsApp contact. The question is: will the person know about the deletion? And can it still track when I’m online?

Whether it’s the ex-girlfriend you no longer want anything to do with, the annoying acquaintance from last weekend or the colleague you no longer particularly want to contact with – there are many reasons to delete a contact from your WhatsApp list. The question is, is access to a person’s profile automatically denied after a contact is removed? Is it really that simple? And what insights do others have after deleting a WhatsApp contact?

The WhatsApp contact is initially removed unnoticed by the concerned person. There is no specific notice of deletion. Thus an unpleasant conversation for justification is eliminated. To delete a contact in WhatsApp, it is necessary to remove the phone number from the global address book of the smartphone. The whole number must be deleted.

Then it depends on your data protection settings in WhatsApp which deleted contact can still be seen. In any case, the deleted person will still see your phone number and – if available – your previous chat history with you. You can decide whether you can see more in the data protection settings.

• Open WhatsApp settings and select “Account” and then “Privacy”.
• Here you can select who can see your information such as “last time online”, “profile photo”, and “about”.
• You can choose between Everyone, My Contacts, and Nobody.
• If you want to prevent deleted contacts from seeing your profile data, set the option to My Contacts.
• The deleted contact will no longer be able to see your profile picture and information, nor will they know when you were last online.

However, there are certain exceptions: If you remove a person from your phone book and adjust your privacy settings, the deleted contact can still see you when you’re online. In addition, it can view your previous chat history and write to you. This creates some contradiction: for a deleted contact, your photo and status disappear, while everything else remains unchanged.

Conversely, if you are deleted as a contact with others, you won’t know it either. You can also only guess that you have been blocked or deleted if you no longer see a contact’s profile picture.

To make sure that no one else can contact you via WhatsApp, block the contact instead of just removing the number from the address book.

1. Open the chat history with the person and tap on their name to go to the communication settings.
2. Scroll down and select Block this contact.
3. Confirm the action. Now the person cannot write to you or contact you via WhatsApp.

If you also remove the number from the address book, then in practice the contact will be completely deleted. The person can no longer access your information and can no longer contact you via WhatsApp. The person does not receive a special notification about this.