Your status updates can only be seen by someone if you have their phone number in your phone's address book and they have your phone number in their phone’s address book. You can choose to share your status updates with all your contacts or selected contacts only. By default, your status updates are shared with all your contacts.

To change your status privacy

1. Tap Status.
   • Android: Tap More options > Status privacy.
   • iPhone: Tap Privacy.
2. Select one of the following options:
   • My contacts: All your contacts will see your status updates.
   • My contacts except…: All your contacts except people you select will see your status updates.
   • Only share with…: Only the contacts you select will see your status updates.

Note:

• Changes to your privacy settings won’t affect status updates you’ve sent already.
• If you've disabled read receipts, you won't be able to see who's viewed your status updates. If a contact has disabled read receipts, you won't be able to see if they've viewed your status updates.

Sharing status updates to Facebook Stories and other apps

If you share your status update, the content of your status update will be shared with other apps and won't be protected by end-to-end encryption. When sharing your status update, WhatsApp won’t share your account information with Facebook or other apps.

Related resources

• Learn how to use status on: Android | iPhone
• Learn how to share WhatsApp status updates to other apps in this article.