[iMore Question]

This is a bit of a weird one: my boyfriend deleted Whatsapp off his old phone. Then for around 12 hours there was a picture and status message of a girl who is his Facebook friend but he claims they are not in contact. I could only see this from a phone that he hadn't saved as a contact. To me, who is saved in his contacts, this account looked blocked (not deleted any more as before).

This happened right when Whatsapp introduced the new encryption.

I know there is a big chance he is lying, but I wanted to check nonetheless if there is any possibility whatsoever this could have been a technical fault? Could Whatsapp maybe just pull data off his Facebook friends' accounts?

Thanks for your guesses!!!!!

[Just_Me_D]

I do not know. Have you checked the WhatsApp support site for answers?

[Branta]

As I remember it Whatscrap has serious privacy concerns, and has been reported to scrape and datamine address books and then collate the potential contacts based on other information they find. Unwanted connections like A knows B, and A knows C, so surely we should suggest B and C should also be in touch, we will suggest the contacts. I had a load of spam like that when some new staff installed Whatsapp on new company phones, and everyone in the company email/phonebook got spammed to install Whatsapp.

It is interesting that on Your phone which has some kind of connection to your BF the contact shows as "Blocked". Only a guess but I think this random female was autosuggested as a contact, he blocked it, and Your phone can see he blocked the suggested contact. The random unrelated phone doesn't get to see he has rejected.

Edit: Any yes, scraping from Facebook is a real possibility now Facebook owns Whatscrap. If your BF and this unwanted female both know the same people the system might suggest others as potential new contacts.