WhatsApp, a messaging service, owned by Facebook, the parent Meta Platforms Inc., yesterday introduced three new privacy-related features.
They include the ability to hide your online status, exit WhatsApp groups silently, and block screenshots for “View Once” images.
The new features, aimed at increasing privacy and giving more control to users, were announced by WhatsApp head, Will Cathcart and Mark Zuckerberg.
WhatsApp is now giving users the ability to hide their online status. While earlier users were able to only hide their ‘Last Seen’ status, the company is now allowing you to hide your ‘Online’ indicator as well.
WhatsApp also allows users to choose whom they want to share their ‘Online’ status indicator with. You can either completely hide the last seen online status from everyone, only unknown numbers, specific contacts, or from nobody.
The feature will add a new “Who can see when I’m online” option under the last seen settings, with two options – ‘Everyone’ and ‘Same as Last Seen.’
Through the “Exit Groups silently” users will be able to leave group chats silently, without WhatsApp showing a “xyz left the group” alert on the chat after you’ve left the group.
With this new feature, WhatsApp will only notify the group admin about a user leaving the group. WhatsApp head Will Cathart said in a tweet that this will be “almost like leaving a party silently and only telling the host.”
Furthermore, View Once messages allow users to send media files that are only viewable once. View once images, however, were not all that fool-proof as it still allowed people to take screenshots of the media file.
Now, WhatsApp has added a screenshot blocking feature on View Once messages that will allow users to block people from taking screenshots of their images.
The new features are aimed at increasing privacy and giving more control to users.
