Let’s be honest. We’ve all at some point prayed for specific privacy features on WhatsApp to be available.
Well, it looks like our prayers have been answered! Meta has announced new privacy features for WhatsApp users.
“Your privacy deserves more protection,” said the platform in a post shared on social media.
This new service aims to enhance security. Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said this would help keep WhatsApp messaging “as private and secure as face-to-face conversations.”
These new privacy features include:
1. Leave groups silently
The popular messaging app currently alerts all members of a group chat to someone leaving or being removed by default.
And while there are ways to disable this for individual group chats, the option to leave silently is not presented to users when they choose to “exit group.” This sometimes causes awkwardness, embarrassment or drama for those trying to leave unnoticed.
With the recent changes, users will be able to leave without notifying the other group chat users, only alerting group administrators.
2. Control who can see you when you’re online
We all have a few people we wish to avoid like the plague and can’t just block. This feature is perfect for such occasions. If a user does not want a few, or even most of their contacts to know that they are currently using the platform, they can block them from seeing the ‘online’ indicator that appears on the chat.
3. Prevent screenshots on ‘view-once’ messages
View-once messages are texts you can send on WhatsApp that get deleted after they are viewed by the receiver. And if we use this feature, it generally means that we don’t want anyone to save that message. So with this amazing feature, the receiver will not be able to take screenshots of videos or photos sent.
Mark Zuckerberg announces three new privacy features, to kick off a new WhatsApp privacy campaign!
The announcement is about group participants, who can see when you’re online, screenshot blocking for view once and a new global campaign!https://t.co/9e30MOt1u5
— WABetaInfo (@WABetaInfo) August 9, 2022
WhatsApp says that this new development will be available to users soon. It will begin rolling out the features this month, highlighting them in a global campaign, starting in the UK.
Another great feature update is that WhatsApp announced that users can now delete messages up to 2 days after they are sent. This update was made public earlier this week. This is an upgrade from the previous limit. Before the update, users could delete messages for everyone in the chat up to 24 hours after they had been sent.
