If you’re an avid WhatsApp user you’ll likely know that late last year the popular chat app introduced a rather important setting that allowed users to delete and revoke messages after you’ve sent them.
Obviously, there were some restrictions on this new feature. For instance, you could only delete messages within seven minutes of sending it. Equally, both sender and receiver needed to be on the latest WhatsApp version for this feature to work.
Describing the feature, the WhatsApp team said: “Deleting messages for everyone allows you to delete specific messages you have sent to either a group or an individual chat.
“This is particularly useful if you sent a message to the wrong chat or if the message you sent contains a mistake.
“Messages you successfully delete for everyone will be replaced with “This message was deleted” in your recipients’ chats.
“Similarly, if you see ‘This message was deleted’ in a chat, it means that the sender deleted their message for everyone.”
However, a loophole has been discovered which doesn’t match up with what WhatsApp have told users about this feature.
At the time of release, WhatsApp told users that recipients may see your message before it’s deleted or if deletion was not successful.
But, Tech website The Next Web has this week reported that a deleted message from WhatsApp will continue to appear in a conversation if it has been quoted.
“We noticed that quoted messages in group chats continue to show in quotes even after they have been wiped,” reported the site.
“Attempting the same thing in a private chat bred the exact same results.”
“While the original message will successfully disappear, the deleted text continues to show in the recipient’s quote.
“WhatsApp highlights in its FAQ that you can only delete messages for up to seven minutes after they have been sent – as long as both the sender and the recipient are using the latest version of the app. Curiously, it makes no mention how the feature works in cases of quotes.”
It’s possible that this is a bug, but equally, it might be a feature which WhatsApp has failed to disclose.
Either way, it’s not the first flaw that’s been found relating to WhatsApp’s delete for everyone feature.
According to Spanish tech blog AndroidJefe, it’s possible to read messages that have already been deleted via the Notification Log on Android phones.
Alternatively, it was also possible by downloading an app called Notification History.
The Independent tested both methods at the time and found that while it was still possible to view messages that have been deleted, you needed to have already interacted with them.
“We were able to read any deleted messages that we’d already read in WhatsApp, for example, and any deleted messages that we’d swiped away when they first appeared on-screen as notifications.
We weren’t, however, able to recover any deleted messages that we hadn’t seen or interacted with before they were deleted, which should come as a relief for everyone.
