WhatsApp is rolling out some much anticipated privacy improvements, including the ability to exit a group chat discretely and to hide your status.
Meta CEO has announced that a raft of privacy features will be coming to WhatsApp this month.
Undoubtedly the most eagerly anticipated is the ability to quietly remove yourself from group chat threads. Right now, leaving a WhatsApp group chat will notify every member that you’ve exited, which always comes across as relatively dramatic and rude, regardless of your intentions.
Once the feature rolls out, only the group’s admins will be notified of your exit.
Another welcome privacy feature that Facebook will be adding soon is the ability to modify your ‘last seen and online’ status for individual contacts. This means that you can set whether particular people can see if and when you’ve been online.
There’ll be options to show this information to ‘Everyone’, ‘My contacts’, and ‘Nobody’, as well as the ability to show your status to ‘My contacts except…’.
WhatsApp has also revealed that it’s testing a privacy feature whereby ephemeral message screenshots are blocked.
“We’ll keep building new ways to protect your messages and keep them as private and secure as face-to-face conversations” said Mark Zuckerberg in a related Facebook post.
WhatsApp has also revealed that it is kicking off a global campaign aimed at educating people on its privacy efforts, which will apparently start in the UK and India.
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