com.whatsapp_preferences.xml periodically gets overwritten how to prevent that from happening

on a magisk rooted Android 10 device com.whatsapp_preferences.xml ( /data/data/com.whatsapp ? ... can't remember that path now ) has been updated with non default parameters as I needed but it periodically gets overwritten *how to prevent that from happening.*
**what I did so far** even if reMount the partition as read write ( for my convenience I do it using total commander with root though I haven't tried I would assume it would end up the same way if I did it on command line ) it will not let me overwrite the original file with my modifications & but if I delete the original and copy the modified file that is allowed. funny...why 🤔 ? I did this and then chown ( to root ) & chmod ed it to 444 then force stopped the app cleared cache .new settings were working until next day I landed up with the same old file that it overwrote
**question**
now I am aware that for WhatsApp or any app to be able to write it should be the owner or maybe the owner should be everyone .. that is the case here as well but the issue is *how can I selectively prevent it from overwriting just one file* - implement this at file level ? alternatively how do I conceive a method that periodically overwrites the the original file with the one I have... after detecting that it has changed.
btw : my APK and data is linked to to second partition which is ext4 via apps2SD