While turning on disappearing messages will give you more privacy, it’s worth remembering that whoever you messaged can still screenshot or film what’s on your screen.
In addition to disappearing messages, you can also set photos and views to “view once”. Not surprisingly, this is exactly as described: the message can only be opened once, and once closed there is no way to go back. When sending a photo or video, tap the icon enclosed in a partial circle. If you send a one-time picture or video, people can’t screenshot it.
Lock WhatsApp messages
Sometimes it’s unavoidable that you’ll need to hand your phone over to someone else — for example, so your kids can play a game or show a friend a photo. If your phone falls into the wrong hands, WhatsApp has two features that can help protect your messages. First, you can turn on screen lock, which keeps apps locked unless you turn it on with Apple’s Face ID or other biometrics on your Android device.To open it, go to set up, privacythen choose screen lock. Before you can turn on the app lock, you need to set the biometric option.
You can also lock personal chats on your phone. This means that to send a message to a locked chat, you need to use your phone’s passcode, or your face or fingerprint to open the chat, and even see notifications from them.To open it, click the in chat and the person’s name, go to chat lockthen select the option lock chat. This will move the chats to a new folder, accessible via Swipe down on the Chat tab.
If you’re going for the most private approach, also consider that any messages that pop up may reveal private information. New message notifications can include entire messages or parts of them as they flash on your screen. If those notifications are also unread, anyone who picks up your device can read them without unlocking the phone.These options can be found in set up, notifyand Show preview.
Prevent people from seeing your personal information
While WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption prevents law enforcement, internet providers, and even Meta from seeing what you send, there are still a few extra steps you can take to increase your privacy on your phone and reduce the chances of your number being targeted By spammers or scammers. Because WhatsApp is so popular, it is often the target of social engineering attacks aimed at stealing your personal information.
Ways to limit the ways people can interact with your account can be found in the following ways: set upthen click privacy. At its simplest, you can tap to turn off read receipts, the two blue ticks that appear when someone sees your message.
Even more effective is the step of stopping people from adding you to groups.under group Settings, with the option to limit who can add you to groups. By default this is set to “Everyone”.However, it can be changed to my contact informationor My contacts besides…, allowing some exceptions. Deciding to limit who can add you to a group doesn’t mean you can’t join a group when the contact isn’t in your contacts. Instead, people who want to add you to a group can request to do so through a separate message.
within privacy, You can also turn off who can see when you last viewed WhatsApp and when you were last online, who can see your profile picture, about section and WhatsApp status. In the privacy settings, you should also check if your real-time location is shared with anyone.
switch to signal
If you’re looking for more privacy, switching messaging apps is a big change, but worth the time and effort. As mentioned, our preferred combination of end-to-end encryption with a higher level of privacy is Signal. A full summary of its privacy options is available here.
