Contact aliases (restricting Whatsapp Contacts with XPrivacy)

[XS666]

Because Whatsapp want all contacts from my phone I tried to restrict it. Whatsapp should only get only the telephone number and a nickname.

So I created some Contacts in my MS Outlook like "Nickname" and "Mobile Number". Thats all Information I want to share with Whatsapp. I restricted contacts for Whatsapp and allowed some contacts with XPrivacy. I did this one week ago and now there are a lot of linked contacts in my phonebook. Maybe Android, Samsung or Whatsapp everytime creates a new link for the contact???

[XS666]

After about 10 Days I checked my phone... in my contact list were about 3.000 Entries which XPrivacy restricted. Can someone please check if this happens on other roms?

[M66B]

I cannot reproduce it and I have no idea why this is happening :-(

[XS666]

I will test this week a little bit.

Maybe someone with a Samsung ROM would test it too?

[M66B]

Steps to reproduce would help.

[XS666]

okay...

I made some Contacts with Outlook just containing minimal Information

e.g.

WA (as Prefix) NAME + Mobile Phone Number, Group "Whatsapp" and private status.

WA Marcel +44 1234565
WA Stefan +49 123345564
WA Andre +49 123456789

Now I synced them with myphoneexplorer to my phone.

I restrict the complete contacts for Whatsapp. Then I allow some contacts and chose the WA-Ones.

Refresh Contact list in Whatsapp. Maybe restart app some time or reboot phone 2-3x. That should reproduce the problem.

I am not sure if this only happens to Samsung ROMS because I only use one phone with Whatsapp...

[M66B]

Can you check again without using myphoneexplorer?

[XS666]

Same issue without sync-tool.

I also allowed "Whatsapp-Account" in this screenshot
https://f.cloud.github.com/assets/4984999/1995254/41d2c7d6-8501-11e3-9269-0b10fa0b677e.jpg

Now i unchecked it and It seems that whatsapp is still running and no more contacts will be added to the android contact database. Must be a problem in reading/writing contacts??

[XS666]

funny that Whatsapp is still working without having any access to the Whatsapp Account

[XS666]

http://pastebin.com/LD0ZcUfj

[M66B]

Can you please try if this version fixes the problem:
https://github.com/M66B/XPrivacy/releases/tag/1.99.37-3

Make sure you restrict contacts/IccProvider (this is new)

[XS666]

I will try, thanks!

Just to mention... Whatsapp is still working without having rights to its account but got an FC when I try to refresh contacts.

I will report.

Thanks! 👍

[XS666]

no, still multiple whatsapp aliases. And some unknown contacts with no numbers, only whatsapp aliases in the phone book... :/

Maybe it is because Whatsapp gets limited information and then write the data to the whatsapp account?

I can simpyl reproduce it when I refresh my contact list - everytime there is a new alias for whatsapp in the phone book.

[M66B]

Can you please try another time with this version:
https://github.com/M66B/XPrivacy/releases/

[M66B]

You may need to allow contacts/profile

[XS666]

I installed the release you posted above.

Now my complete phone book leaked because I see all Contacts in Whatsapp :/

contacts/profile was not getting in bold letters.

I am back to the latest beta now - now I only see the contacts I restricted.

BTW I am the only (crazy person with paranoia) that restrict the contact Information for Whatsap to a minimum???

[M66B]

Can you give it another go with 1.99.37-6+
https://github.com/M66B/XPrivacy/releases

I rewrote most of the contact allowing now.

[M66B]

You can also update to 1.99.38 from the Xposed repo and have some more functions ;-)

[XS666]

Hi Marcel, there is also a 1.99.38-2 - should I try this one?

This evening I will check it - is there something to check or uncheck?

[M66B]

Yes, try the latest version, please.

[XS666]

Settings okay or should I restrict the red ones too?

I tried to test with the latest Version but same behaviour.

There are also unknown Contacts in my PhoneBook right now - without any link to a contact:

Here a specific contact:

strange:

[XS666]

now I...

• checked all checkboxes under Contacts for Whatsapp
• allowed Accounts for Whatsapp (no checks)
• deleted contacts database, restarted the device
• synced all my contacts back on the device (in memory Phone)

Same issues.

There are several unknown contacts and for every refresh in the whatsapp contact list there is a new link in the phonebook contact.

[M66B]

"checked all checkboxes under Contacts for Whatsapp"
Try without restricting the dangerous functions.

[XS666]

When Accounts is disabled (or enabled and Whatsapp allowed) there are no new entries in the phonebook. It seems that Whatsapp produces lot of data in the phone and the phone links them together to a bunch of waste :)

[XS666]

it also seems that the unknown contacts are the contacts which I allowed for Whatsapp but they don't have an account - yet.

[M66B]

There is little more I can do here, because these are limitations of the contact provider.
It is not possible to get a (raw) contact ID in all circumstances.
I will leave this issue open, but marked as lowprio.

[XS666]

Thanks Marcel.

Workaround for me:

• "fresh Contacts"
• restricting contacts for Whatsapp
• restricting accounts for Whatsapp after first start and refresh

Now I can use it without having 3000+ Contacts in my Phonebook because whatsapp is not able to write to the phonebook. But... when I refresh the contacts I get a FC and new contacts cannot be found. But I can live with that for now...

[M66B]

If you provide a logcat of the FC, I will look into it.

[XS666]

http://pastebin.com/XAutDrZa :)

[M66B]

Reported to have been fixed.

[XS666]

who reported? :o

[JayjohnX]

Hello,
had this problem too. I fixed it by reinstalling whatsapp (plus deleting still existing whatsapp folder) and before starting it then the first time, I didn't allowed accounts (even not whatsapp account). My whatsapp works fine. The only "thing" is that there is no whatsapp-connection shown in the contacts - before whatsapp created an entry thats shows the whatsapp icon, now I have no information about it in the contacts. But better than having a lot of clones.
I am using the newest version of XPrivacy (2.2.1) and to unrestrict some of the contacts I bought the pro license.

[M66B]

@JayjohnX maybe it is an idea to document this here for easy reference:
http://forum.faircode.eu/forums/forum/android/xprivacy/applications/

[XS666]

Thanks JayjohnX. That might solve the problem for other Whatsapp-User. I canceled my Whatsapp-Account, now I am using Threema. Still some missing contacts but the whole thing is a lot safer than WA.

[JayjohnX]

I will do a comment there. I think there are a lot of save chat apps but whatsapp is that one all of my friends are using...

[JayjohnX]

Please see: http://forum.faircode.eu/forums/topic/com-whatsapp-contact-aliases-restricting-whatsapp-contacts-with-xprivacy/

or search for [com.whatsapp] Contact aliases (restricting Whatsapp Contacts with XPrivacy) in http://forum.faircode.eu/forums/forum/android/xprivacy/applications/

[Ano11]

Hi there Marcel and others,

I just purchased XPrivacy Pro in order to restrict WhatsApp from getting all of my phonebook contacts. After installing WhatsApp, I restrict the "Contacts" group in XPrivacy and start WhatsApp: the contact list in WhatsApp is empty, as it should. Next, I select several contacts in XPrivacy to be allowed for WhatsApp. When I re-open WhatsApp and choose "Refresh", the selected contacts are found. So far so good.

But after a reboot of the phone, the contact list in WhatsApp is empty again, refreshing the contacts list still leaves the list empty.
When I now go to "Allow contacts" in XPrivacy again, each contact I selected earlier to allow is now shown in the list twice! One of them is checked, one is not checked. When I check the second one as well, the contacts appear in the WhatsApp contact list again after a refresh.

After another reboot, the contacts are still are not there in the WhatsApp contact list. When I open XPrivacy and I look at the "allow" list in XPrivacy, the double contacts are still there but the second one is unchecked again! Putting a checkmark there again, the contacts are found in WhatsApp.

Conclusion: I can live with the fact that my WhatsApp contacts appear two times in my phonebook, if that is what it takes for XPrivacy to work. However, every time when I reboot I have to manually run XPrivacy and have to re-check all my contacts in the "allow list" again in order for WhatsApp to see them. That's very annoying, especially when you have many, many contacts in your phonebook...

Is this something that can be resolved? I am using a double-sim Nokia X phone.
Thanks!

[M66B]

@Ano11
I have no idea about how to fix this.
Contact handling on Android is quite complex and there seems to be some interaction between Android, Whatsapp and XPrivacy. Whatsapp is probably maintaining its own contact group, which Android probably is merging with the main contact list.
Restricting contacts is done using the contact IDs and it seems that these are in your case changing after reboot.

[Ano11]

@M66B
I have a new phone (Samsung GH-130H) with Android 4.4.2.
Now it works fine, no problems with disappearing contacts anymore ;-)

[M66B]

So, it looks like this was an Android problem after all.

[Ano11]

Well, there still seems to be an issue...
Everything looks fine in WhatsApp itself and in the phone's Contact list, however, the "Allow contacts" list in XPrivacy gets longer and longer...
Everytime I reboot a new entry is added for the selected contacts, for each allowed entry one is ticked and the others are unticked. I guess after 1,000,000 reboots this might result in an over flow error ? ;-)
Or is there another way to force XPrivacy to use the 'old' settings before the reboot?

[XS666]

Hi there,

when I opened this issue I had Android 4.2.2 on my S4. I switched to 4.4.2 in April and I also had this issues after upgrading Android. Since I deleted Whatsapp in August I can't help out anymore :/