How to control your privacy on WhatsApp: these are the functions you should know about

March 4 (Portaltic/EP) –

The privacy is one of the priorities of messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, which frequently updates the functions aimed at protecting user data, with features such as the end-to-end encryption or systems such as two-step verification.

The company has spent months developing new features aimed at having greater control over conversations in different beta versions of this service and that are intended for both individual conversations and group chats.

Some functions are available in the Privacy section of the Settings menu, where you can modify data such as the time of the last connection, who can see the profile photo or who has access to the States.

WhatsApp implemented some of these privacy options in August of last year, which are already available to all users, whether they use the desktop version of the platform or from iOS and Android devices.

One of the newest options is silently leaving groups, thanks to which users can leave a group chat without being notified on the screen, as was the case before.

In this way, when users want to leave a group, only the group administrator or administrators will receive this notice if there is more than one. “The purpose of this function is to help to make users feel more comfortable leaving groups they no longer want to be a part of,” WhatsApp explains in its Web page.

Another of the alternatives that allow you to view or save conversations without deleting them is Archiving Chat. It is an organization tool thanks to which you can hide individual or group chats in a folder located at the top of the interface.

In this section, all the archived chats are gathered, for which you can also choose a certain configuration, since you can choose whether to keep these conversations archived when messages are received or not. In case you don’t have it activated, once the contact send a messageyour chat is placed directly in the inbox.

THE DOUBLE TIC OR READING CONFIRMATIONS

Users also have the option of turning off read receipts for chats, which means that your contacts won’t be able to tell if their messages have been read. That way, those who receive them can decide when to respond without pressure.

As specified in the Privacy section of the application, in case of deactivating read receipts, These users will also not be able to know if the recipients have opened the chat and have read them.

WhatsApp also allows you to determine which users can know the ‘Online’ status and from whom it should be hidden. This section is found in the section ‘Last Time and Online’, where the options ‘Everyone’, ‘My contacts’, ‘No one’ and ‘My contacts, except…’ are displayed. Choosing this last option automatically opens the contact list to manually select those from whom you want to hide this information.

Silencing individual or group chats is another of the options available in the application to control privacy, which can come in handy if, for example, you are checking your mobile phone with other people.

In case of muting these notices, a specific time period must be chosen, that is, eight hours, a week or always. WhatsApp reminds, on the other hand, that the users and participants of a group conversation will not be able to know if this option has been activated or not and will continue to receive notifications if they hadn’t.

Finally, to choose which photos and videos you want to store in the device’s gallery, the platform has a section in the Storage and data section, in which you must set download settings.

While voice messages are always downloaded automatically, whether on WiFi or mobile data, the app distinguishes between ‘Download with mobile data, ‘Download with Wi-Fi’ and ‘In data roaming’ the different files received (photos, audio files, videos and documents). In this case, you can choose what to download and what not on your mobile.

It should be remembered that all these privacy-focused features are available both in the versions of WhatsApp for iOS and Android and in the Web, Desktop, KaiOS and Windows versions.