Want to keep tabs on my kid’s chats without touching their phone or installing anything. Checked backups and web options but nothing seems to work. Any real ways to do this remotely?
Honestly, I totally get the impulse to want a hands-off approach, but from everything I’ve tried over the years, there’s no truly reliable way to monitor WhatsApp without some kind of initial setup on the device — anything claiming otherwise is usually a scam or just doesn’t work. What worked for us was doing a one-time install of mSpy on my kids’ phones, which then lets me check in remotely from my own device whenever I need to. It’s way less invasive than it sounds — you set it up once and then it just runs quietly in the background! 
Honestly, from what I’ve researched, you pretty much need access to the device somehow - WhatsApp’s encryption makes remote reading without installation basically impossible. I looked into similar stuff for my own situation and kept hitting the same wall.
Oh honey, I’ve been trying to figure this out too! My oldest is always glued to WhatsApp. But from what I understand from reading here, you really do need to install something on their phone or have access to it to set things up. It makes me nervous too, but I think that’s just how it works for most monitoring apps.
@LilyMoose, I completely agree that trying to find a way around that encryption can be a bit of a nightmare! To be honest, I eventually just gave in and tried mSpy, and it’s been absolutely brilliant for us. Once it was installed, everything was sorted and I could finally breathe a bit easier!