WhatsApp details privacy and safety features rolled out in 2022

Meta-owned instant messaging platform WhatsApp rolled out a number of privacy and safety features this 2022. Together the features form a layer of protection that gives users privacy and control over their conversations while messaging. Here is the list of safety and privacy features WhatsApp introduced this year to ensure safety and security of users on its platform:

Admin control

With the rollout of ‘Communities’ feature on WhatsApp, admin control has been strengthened. As they are responsible for making and managing the community, they can choose which groups become part of it. Community admins have the ability to remove groups and an individual member from the Community. In addition, group admins can also delete inappropriate or abusive chats or media for all members of a group.

Screenshot blocking for view once messages

View Once feature is a way of sharing photos or media that don’t need a permanent digital record. Screenshot blocking for View Once messages ensures that no one can take a screenshot of the photos and videos users sent, giving even more control over their privacy.

Leave group silently

With this feature, WhatsApp allows users to leave a group silently. Instead of the full group, only the admins will be notified when a user exits a group.

Online Presence

This feature allows users to chat with certain people without letting other contacts know about their online status. Earlier, you could not choose who can see your online status. Now, users can change online presence by changing their privacy setting in the app.

Forwarding Limits

It restricts messages with a ‘forwarded’ label to just five chats at once and ‘highly-forwarded messages’ to just one chat at a time. WhatsApp also introduced new group forwarding limits, where messages that have the ‘forwarded’ label can only be forwarded to one group at a time.

Code Verify

The usage of WhatsApp has not only been limited to mobile devices, people are using it on laptops and computers too. For an added layer of security, the company launched ‘Code Verify’, which is a web browser extension that provides real-time, third-party verification that the code running user’s WhatsApp Web has not been tampered.