Just got a new phone that I want to use primarily for work while still keeping my other, have been adding contacts on my new Motorola (it saves them to my gmail account) and these contacts have been added to whatsapp on my old samsung. Have tried deleting the gmail app on my samsung but it still doesn't fix the problem.
N.B. I dont have whatsapp on my new phone
your whatapps retrieves contacts from your old phone's contact list which synced to your gmail account
just use new gmail account on your work phone.
It syncs your contacts from your Gmail. If you disable the sync on your Google account on your old phone, it should stop adding new contacts to your old phone. However, you still need to "clean up" the work contacts that has already been synced on your old phone.
Went into settings > Google > accounts and just 'removed' my email. Seemed to clean up the contacts that had been copied over for me aswell
Thanks for the help
Ok cool. Just a caveat though, your Google account is used for other things like the Play store, Google Drive, Maps, Youtube, etc.
If there isn't any alternate Google account on your old phone, you might want to add it back but immediately disable the sync before it has a chance to sync your contacts again. :)
It has nothing to do with WhatsApp.
It is how the Contacts App from Google is synching the contacts on your Google Account.
Whatsapp syncs to Google Drive.
You probably authorised WA to read your contact list on Google a long time ago.