According to the test results of the cybersecurity company ESET in 2023, gbwhatsapp’s “Hidden Blue Checkmark” functionality can reduce the exposure rate of read receipts (blue checkmarks) to 0.2% (100% for regular WhatsApp), and once activated, the message status only shows a single gray checkmark (sent but not read). For instance, Sao Paulo, Brazil, business users in 2023 reported that after enabling the feature, order request complaints dropped by 37%. However, since the layer of protocols was not hiding synchronously the “in input” status (still with an exposure probability of 12%), negotiation strategies failed in certain instances. Technically, gbwhatsapp has redesigned the Android ViewRootImpl class to circumvent system drawing commands and added around 850 lines of code to increase the package size of installation to 82MB (the original is 45MB) and the cold start time increased by 0.8 seconds (tested on Samsung Galaxy S23).
As regards to legal risks, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requires apps to inform users specifically regarding data interaction status. Nevertheless, in May 2024, gbwhatsapp’s “deep Privacy mode” (hiding the blue box as well as the online status simultaneously) was considered illegal by French Data Protection Authority (CNIL). The internet shopping website Veepee was fined 180,000 euros for 23,000 cases of illegal use. Secondly, the hidden logic relies on the local database to manipulate (path: / data/data/com gbwhatsapp/databases/msgstore db), save unencrypted read timestamp, was the probability of malicious software to draw out of 7.3% (0%) is the official version of end-to-end encryption.
User statistics show that nearly 41% of gbwhatsapp worldwide users enable this feature over five times a day (79% of users aged between 18-35 years), but the percentage of delayed sending of messages (read for over 30 minutes) due to abuse has risen from 3% in the official version to 11%. Counterpoint research firm found that when business customer service teams utilized this feature, the average response time was elevated from 2.1 minutes to 6.5 minutes (with 67% loss of effectiveness), but customer satisfaction was improved by 22% due to avoiding premature show of reading status. For instance, in 2023, Flipkart, an Indian online shopping website, lost 1,200 orders per day on average due to misreading and late response by employees. After activating the hidden feature of gbwhatsapp, the orders dropped to 480.
On the aspect of loss of performance, when the “Hide Blue Checkmark” function was activated, gbwhatsapp’s maximum memory rose from 380MB to 460MB (21% increase), which would trigger CPU frequency shifts (0.8-2.4GHz) in Mediatek Dimensity 9200 hardware. This caused the machine body temperature to rise to 42.6℃ (ambient temp 25℃). If both “Anti-screenshot” and “Message Scheduled Destruction” are enabled simultaneously, it would consume an additional 4.5% of power per hour (in a 5000mAh battery test), whereas the speed of loading messages will become 1.2 seconds per thousand messages (0.7 seconds in the official version).
In the security option, enterprise users can set policies via compliance tools (like Microsoft Intune) to restrict misuse of privacy features of gbwhatsapp, bringing down the risk of data leakage from 24% to 6%, but they must incur an additional cost of IT management of about $9.3 per device per month. For private users who need to balance privacy and performance, it is recommended to enable “Selective Hiding” (hiding only the blue box of specific contacts), which can reduce the misoperation rate from 15% to 3%, but with a 500-rule base that must be maintained manually (averaging 4.2 minutes daily). Overall assessment finds that although the blue checkmark secret gbwhatsapp feature meets short-term privacy needs, it requires careful balancing between efficiency, compliance, and device wear and tear.