What are new WhatsApp privacy features?

Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg Tuesday revealed three new privacy features for WhatsApp, saying they will keep building new ways to protect the messages.

The US billionaire announced the development on his official Facebook page.

“New privacy features coming to WhatsApp: exit group chats without notifying everyone, control who can see when you’re online, and prevent screenshots on view once messages,” Mark Zuckerberg said.

He said that the company is building new ways to protect the messages and keep them as private and secure as face-to-face conversations.

Meanwhile, WABetainfo has reported that WhatsApp is now launching a new global campaign in order to inform users about new features and how the app secures their experience by using different layers of protections thanks to their privacy features: end-to-end encryption, two-step verification, end-to-end encrypted chat backup, and more.

“The focus of their campaign is also to educate people to understand what the real security is: it is important to protect users not only when the information is sent but even when it’s stored (for example, by using end-to-end encrypted backups).”

Exit group chats

As per the details, after the new settings are rolled out only the group admins will be notified if someone leaves the group chat.

Last seen and online

According to the Whatsapp watcher, a user will have more control over who can see when he/she is using WhatsApp and when the user doesn’t want everyone to be able to see the online presence.

The user can choose the option “Same as Last Seen”. This feature will finally start to be released to users this month.

Screenshot blocking

The new privacy feature announced by Mark Zuckerberg prevents taking screenshots to “view once” image or video.

The WABetainfo stated that a user can still take screenshots of conversations, even if they contain some disappearing messages, at the moment. 

“As always, when you send a view once photo or video, WhatsApp will inform you that people may still get them by using a secondary phone or camera, so it is always important to be careful when using this feature: it’s up to you.”

In addition, it added that there isn’t a system to inform the sender when someone attempted to take a screenshot to their view once image and video because the attempt to take a screenshot will be automatically blocked.