Whatsapp and seeing contacts names instead of just phone numbers

Wonderien

I know whatsapp is suckerberg spyware, and not sure how much we can trust that end-to-end encryption.

But I have reinstalled it since I am a frequent traveler, and most of the world is using it, even for business. I only have it on my secondary user profile, though, where I have other invasive apps installed as well.

No matter what I do on Graphene, I keep just seeing the phone number, and it says they are not a contact.
Even though I added them to contact scopes, even though I give whatsapp full permission access to my contact list, even though I give Google play store full access to my contacts, nothing changes. I tried adding them to my contact in the main profile where I don't have whatsapp installed, same shit, doesn't work.

Only when I add those contacts on my old Redmi phone, I get to save them and see their names in whatsapp, instead of just a number. Pretty annoying, I feel.

Contact scopes don't seem to work on my Pixel 7a GrapheneOS system?

Michiel

Wonderien For me (Pixel 8) it works: only for the contacts I included in contact scopes I see the user names. I use WhatsApp in a secondary profile without Google Play Services (it also worked similarly in the owner profile with GPS). So hopefully it is 'only' a matter of settings or permissions and can it be fixed for you.

[deleted]

Wonderien what exactly are you worrying about by not giving it a full Contacts permission? After all your privacy is not dependent only on your actions but also those who you interact with and if they have you in their contacts, you might as well just do the same. You can't really hide if the finger is pointing at you.

Michiel

[deleted] Sure, the only thing it prevents is that Meta maps all my contacts (I use WA only for a limited number of contacts and groups, and use Signal in most cases). So at least I do not contribute to point the finger to the others in my contact list. I hope.

Wonderien

I don't worry too much about it, but as I said, even if I do give full permissions, it doesn't work.

Nothing I do makes it work.
There's no way to click on the phone number inside of WhatsApp app and then save to contacts either, which is normally the case.