From 17:30 until 22:30 WhatsApp had problems with privacy-related features. What happened
Update at 22:30. The issue has been resolved.
Original article
"Unable to update privacy settings. Please try again later." This is the message that many users are receiving in the last few hours when they try to access the privacy section of WhatsApp. But not only that. You also have problems with the display of the time of the last access, if the user is online or if he is writing in the chat. The malfunction seems to be generalized and is affecting a large part of Italian users.
The first reports began to arrive around 17:00, but in the last half hour have increased significantly. Reading the comments of online users, the problem is the same for everyone: inability to see the last login and to change privacy settings. It's not a real down of the application, since it's possible to send messages with multimedia content, but it's a rather annoying inefficiency of which we don't know the nature.
WhatsApp doesn't work: you can't see the status of a person
The problems seem to be related to privacy features: you can't see if a person is online and the time of last access. We did some tests in the editorial office and talking to one of our contacts, the status update reads: last accessed at 14:06. Most likely the problems started to emerge around 15:00, but users started to experience the problem a few hours later.
In addition to the time of last login, you can't even change the privacy settings: the message "Unable to update privacy settings. As for sending and receiving messages, however, there is no problem: everything works perfectly.
Reading the comments of users on downdetector.it, a site that collects reports when a service or an app does not work, it seems that the problems also concern the initial configuration of the app. One user has uninstalled and re-installed the app, but is currently unable to complete the process. We will continue to monitor the situation and keep you updated.