In an effort to raise awareness of the overlapping levels of security that give users more privacy and control over their conversations while communicating on the platform, WhatsApp is launching a new edition of its worldwide brand campaign. The goal of WhatsApp’s campaign is to inform users about the built-in privacy measures that have been added to the messaging service over time, including three new privacy features; leaving groups silently, controlling who can see when you’re online, and screenshot blocking for “view once” messages.
“We want users to know that they always have a safe and private space on WhatsApp, no matter where they are! We feel it’s a great privilege that two billion people around the world trust WhatsApp to deliver their personal messages everyday and this campaign is an affirmation of WhatsApp’s continued commitment to protecting their private conversations,” Avinash Pant, Director – Marketing at Meta India, said in a statement.
Notable Features.
Leave Groups Silently: We often want to leave WhatsApp groups, but at the same time we don’t want everyone to get notified about it. We’ve all been there; but with WhatsApp’s built-in protection, users will be able to exit a group privately without having to notify everyone.
Screenshot Blocking: WhatsApp already incorporated the view once feature sometime ago, where you only get to view a photo and it disappears on the recipient device; but it had a flaw in which the recipient could easily screenshot, going against privacy and security as WhatsApp has stated that those are its DNA. But with updates rolling out soon, there will be a feature to block screenshots for “view once.”
Choose Who Can See When You’re Online: For the times you want to keep your online presence private; WhatsApp is introducing the ability to select who can and can’t see when you’re online.
Retrieve Deleted Messages: The ability to retrieve deleted messages; according to the report, is only for messages you delete for yourself (delete for me); not messages you “delete for everyone”. A snack bar will appear informing the user that the message has been deleted and they can cancel it. It is not known how long the user will have to retrieve deleted messages.
Group Admins Deleting Messages For All: The instant messaging app that Meta owns; also mentions the ability for group admins to delete any message for everyone in the group. This was also spotted by WhatsApp tracker WABetaInfo; and the feature is now available to some beta testers on WhatsApp for iOS.
Release Dates.
In the meantime, the new features are being tested for WhatsApp Beta iOS users in version 22.18.0.70. However, the feature will also be rolled out to Android users as well.
There has been this talk that WhatsApp is slowly turning into those modded WhatsApps where everything is customizable; but I think, considering the levels of security and privacy these features provide , I think we should embrace it wholeheartedly.
