Weird whatsapp or lie?

[Chris in VA]

Situation is that Person A sent a one line message to Person B. No reply. Next day, A sees that B was online on Whatsapp at that exact time. (Whatsapp scrolls a "last seen" timestamp under the person's name.) Also sees message was not received (two check marks not blue). 

In conversation next day, B says B did see the message as a notification. 

So here's the weird part--A sends another message and tells B not to open Whatsapp, to see if a notification triggers a timestamp under the name indication. It doesn't. 

So question....Is it possible B is lying and was using Whatsapp the night before? 

I don't know how to google to find out officially if a mere notification changes online status. 

[Arcadia]

I can read my WhatsApp messages on my Samsung galaxy smart watch. I think my WhatsApp status on my phone is always showing online unless my iPhone battery is flat. My husband’s WhatsApp status is online too even when his android phone is charging in the living room and he is gaming in the bedroom. 

[Amira]

That all makes sense to me.  Online status on WhatsApp doesn’t necessarily tell you much, depending on the device you’re using. For me, a notification doesn’t change my online status. I can also be using WhatsApp and see a message come in (and maybe read it in its entirety if it’s short enough to fit in the pop up notification), but it wouldn’t get marked as read unless I open the chat it was sent to.  

[Chris in VA]

Yes but I dont mean online status, sorry. It is Last Seen that I mean, which tells you when a person is actually looking at whatsapp. But the message was not marked as seen as evidenced by two blue check marks. To me that means Person B was looking at whatsapp but not at Person B's chat conversation. But Person B denies being on. And it would follow that Person B closed Whatsapp at the Last seen time, right? IOW, my question is, does merely receiving a notification change your "Last seen" time? Even if you tap it, wouldn't that change the double check marks to blue?

Edited June 7, 2020 by Chris in VA

[katilac]

I don't know, but I do know that apps are frequently weird and do what they're not supposed to do all. the. time. 

Like sometimes we click Submit Reply on this forum and our message shows up 72 times, or we don't get notifications for a thread we're following. I defintely wouldn't call somebody out because an app said they were online. 

 

[Amira]

1 hour ago, Chris in VA said:

Yes but I dont mean online status, sorry. It is Last Seen that I mean, which tells you when a person is actually looking at whatsapp. But the message was not marked as seen as evidenced by two blue check marks. To me that means Person B was looking at whatsapp but not at Person B's chat conversation. But Person B denies being on. And it would follow that Person B closed Whatsapp at the Last seen time, right? IOW, my question is, does merely receiving a notification change your "Last seen" time? Even if you tap it, wouldn't that change the double check marks to blue?

Last Seen is the last time WhatsApp registered you as online, which isn’t necessarily when you actually last had the app open, even though that’s how it’s supposed to work. I know that my phone registers me as being online at times when I am not actually looking at the app.  So do lots of other apps (like my online scrabble app).  Person B might have closed the app a few minutes earlier but WhatsApp didn’t register it immediately.  Or the app could have been open in the background and the person wasn’t looking at it, but WhatsApp registered them as online.  

When I have a message notification pop up, that doesn’t change my online status/last seen time. If you sent a message to someone at 10:25 and their last seen time was 10:26, it would seem that they should have seen that a message was there even if they hadn’t tapped to open it in the chat. But it’s not as exact as that.  I’ve had times where I’m in the middle of a slow chat with someone and I put my phone down after it seemed like we were finished talking, and the other person sends more messages a couple of minutes later but WhatsApp doesn’t send me a notification because it thinks I’m still online and looking at the conversation.  It would look to the other person like I’m ignoring them, but in reality my phone was off and I didn’t get a notification at all and didn’t see the message till later.

There have even been times when I’ve sent a message and it is marked as read, but the receiver didn’t see it. It’s definitely possible to game the system in WhatsApp and avoid responding to messages for a while (I use WhatsApp constantly and we all do this), but you can’t assume that someone has seen a message just because WhatsApp said they were online when you sent it, or that they were last seen at the time you sent the message.

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

I agree with everything @Amira said.  If I had other reasons to doubt, I might raise my eyebrow at this, but it is definitely not enough to prove guilt by any stretch.  

[Lanny]

I don't think the time stamp is always shown. I suspect that may be a User Configuration setting. Sometimes I see the time stamp and sometimes I don't. Also, sometimes I see the 2 little marks are not Blue, but I know the recipient has read the message. Our family uses WhatsApp extensively, including for my DW to tell me when Breakfast is ready, if I'm not in the Kitchen while she's making Breakfast.   I use WhatsApp on the web a lot when I'm at my Laptop, because it's a lot easier to type on the external USB Keyboard. You might find the answers to your questions on https://www.whatsapp.com/   and here's the link for WhatsApp on the web:  https://web.whatsapp.com/

ETA: The answers to your questions might possibly be found in a sub Reddit or on Quora. I'm not sure how Quora works, but I read 2 sub Reddits and that seems straightforward.

 

Edited June 7, 2020 by Lanny
Add ETA

[Andromeda]

Agreeing with all that was said. I can't explain it as well as Amira and Lanny, but WhatsApp doesn't always mark messages read or a person being online or not in a reliable way. I only use it to chat with my mom who prefers it to other chat apps, and she often says why didn't you read X or why didn't you watch Y that I sent you. The thing is that sometimes I do and sometimes I don't, but the app doesn't mark it reliably.