Whitelisted contacts lose whitelisting automatically

[Salamimonster]

Android: 6.0.1
Xposed Ver. 3.0 alpha4
XPrivacy Ver. 3.6.19 (481)

When I unblock/whitelist contacts for WhatsApp, the contacts are accessible for WhatsApp for a moment (~5 - 10 sec?). Then the ticks on the checkboxes for that contacs in XPrivacy are removed by itself.

You can watch that behavior here (YouTube).

At the moment one of 40 contacts stays checked in XPrivacy (firstname: AA, familyname: Contact). I created that contact for test purposes. I don´t know why this contact stays checked, especially, because an other similar test contact (firstname: AB, familyname: Contact) also is unchecked automatically.

All contacts are stored in my google account. I used the same way to unblock contacts for WhatsApp on my Android 4.3 phone, my wifes 5.1 phone and also on an other of my phones with Android 6.0.1 (but with MiUi and modified Xposed version). On all this phones it worked just fine. oO

[Edit:] Just added some comments to the video.

[christianrj]

This is exactly the problem I'm facing since july 2016. #2363

[AnotherSnufkin]

I think I may be having the same problem (whitelisted contacts unchecking themselves in XPrivacy and disappearing from WhatsApp's contact list when refreshing), and found a possible work around. Steps (possibly not all needed):

1. Started with all contacts blocked.
2. Refreshed contact list in WhatsApp, showed no contacts (as expected).
3. Switched to XPrivacy, ticked a contact.
4. Switched to WhatsApp, refreshed contacts, ticked contact listed.
5. Quickly (before it disappeared) switched back to XPrivacy.
6. Opened the contacts whitelist, tick had disappeared. Reticked it.
7. Switched back to WhatsApp, contacts still showed the ticked contact.
8. Refreshed the list and the contact stayed visible. It stayed visible after several refreshes and a reboot.

I don't know if it's relevant, but the 'working' animated circle shows when refreshing the WhatsApp contact list, and stays there until exiting the screen.

Moto E 2015 (stock bootloader/OS), Android 6.0, xposed-v87-sdk23, xposed installer 3.1.1, xprivacy_v481, WhatsApp 2.17.79
SuperSU 2.62-3 and xposed framework installed via squid's twrp:
https://forum.xda-developers.com/moto-e-2015/development/twrp-squid-twrp-recovery-moto-e-lte-t3137649

As it happens, I only needed to contact one person in WhatsApp, and once one message had been sent then I can still send messages to that person even if the contact list disappears, so it now works well enough for me. Thanks for making it possible for me to keep everyone else's contact details private.

(edited at least one typo).

[Salamimonster]

Thank you for sharing that workaround with us. In the past it worked 2 of 10 times, but it worked somehow. But at the moment, all my whatsapp contacts (63) are not shown in Whatsapp. I tried it for at least an hour (I set all the ticks for like 20 times) to keep them ticked, but only 25 of them keept ticked.

[Tentos]

There may be another workaround. I had the same problem on my Android 6.0.1 phone. My solution was to block the access of WhatsApp to its own WhatsApp account (i.e., do not include the WhatsApp account in the accounts whitelist for WhatsApp). Afterwards, the whitelisted contacts stayed whitelisted as expected.
There is one downside: you do not see the WhatsApp information in the contacts of your contacts app. Still, this is an issue I have no problem with.

Edit: I have just experienced a whitelist loss despite the workaround. However, this could be due to the Android update I had some hours ago. I have again whitelisted the desired contacts, and they stay whitelisted for now. Should the problem appear again, I will keep you updated.

[neuoy]

@Tentos your workarround works for me, thanks. I wonder if the contact gets unchecked when whatsapp modifies it?

[Tentos]

@neuoy That may be possible. Unfortunately, I do not have any real knowledge of Android contacts (or Android in general...), so I can only guess. If I remember correctly, @M66B mentioned on the XPrivacy thread that the XPrivacy contacts restriction was quite hard to implement because of the complicated (non-standard?) way the contacts part of Android is programmed (or something similar).
I think that this is why he did not look into the WhatsApp contact problem when it happened some years ago [1], and I certainly don't blame him for that. (On the contrary, XPrivacy is still awesome on supported platforms.)

[1] This WhatsApp contacts problem happened on my old Android 4.2 device some years ago with some versions of WhatsApp, and blocking the WhatsApp account was the workaround I found back then. The workaround was no longer necessary after some WhatsApp releases, i.e., the whitelisting problem disappeared.