While turning on disappearing messages gives you more privacy, you should keep in mind that anyone you message with can still take a screenshot or take a picture of what’s on the screen.
In addition to disappearing messages, you can also set the photo and view to Single View. This—not surprisingly—works exactly how it’s described: Messages can only be opened once, and you can’t go back to it once it’s closed. When sending a photo or video, tap the icon located in a circle section. If you send an image or video once, people can’t screenshot it.
Lock WhatsApp messages
There are bound to be times when you need to give your phone to someone else—for example, so your child can play a game or let a friend see a photo. WhatsApp has two features that can help protect your messages if your phone falls into the wrong hands. You can first enable Screen Lock to lock an app unless you open it with Apple’s Face ID or another biometric on your Android device. To enable this feature, go to Setting, Privacyand choose Lock screen. You will need to set up biometric options before you turn on app lock.
You can also lock individual chats on your phone. This is meant to send a message to locked chat, you’ll need to use your phone’s passcode or your face or fingerprint to open chats and even see notifications from them. To enable this feature, tap on a chat and the person’s name, go to chat lockand select the option to chat lock. This will move the chat into a new folder that can be accessed by swipe down on the Chats tab.
If you are using the most private method, also consider that any message that pops up could reveal personal information. New message notifications can include the entire message or just some of its content as they flash across your screen. If these notifications are also unread, anyone who picks up your device can read them without having to unlock the phone. These options can be adjusted in Setting, NotificationAnd 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’re sending, there are some extra steps you can take to strengthen your privacy. on your phone and reduce the chances of your number being targeted by spammers or scammers. Because WhatsApp is so popular, it frequently becomes the target of social engineering attacks to steal your personal information.
All the ways to restrict how people can interact with your account are found through Settingthen touch Privacy. At its simplest, you can tap to turn off read receipts, the two blue checkmarks that show up when someone has viewed your message.
More effective are steps that prevent people from adding you to the group. Under Groups settings, there is an option to limit who can add you to the group. By default, this is set to “everyone”. However, it can be changed to My Contactsor My contacts except…, allowing some exceptions. Deciding to limit who can add you to the group doesn’t mean you can’t join the group when everyone isn’t in your contacts. Instead, people who want to add you to the group can request to do so via a private message.
In Privacy, you can also turn off who can see the last time you viewed WhatsApp and when you were last online, who can see your profile picture, About section and WhatsApp Status. While in the privacy settings, you should also check if you are sharing your live location with anyone.
Switch to signal
If you’re looking for more privacy, switching messaging apps is a huge upheaval but might be worth the time and effort. As mentioned earlier, our preference for combining end-to-end encryption with a higher level of privacy is Signal. A full summary of it privacy option here.
