WhatsApp introduces Advanced Chat Privacy to improve user security

WhatsApp has introduced a new feature called Advanced Chat Privacy. This option has been designed to enhance security for users engaged in personal chats, and group conversations.

Though often criticized due to its close ties to parent company, Meta, WhatsApp offers various privacy-friendly options such as end-to-end encryption for chats, disappearing messages, chat lock, view once messages, which has made the platform a popular choice for millions of users around the world.

The new Advanced Chat Privacy feature improves upon the security, by allowing users to block others in the chat from exporting the message history, effectively creating a safeguard for sensitive discussions that might involve personal or business-related information. It can also be used to prevent other people from auto-downloading media to their phone, and using messages for AI features. The company explained that the enhancement is particularly useful for group chats where users may not know each other well, such as a support group, or a community. The new options will help you by providing an extra layer of security for sharing sensitive data.

The option is not enabled by default, users can activate the new feature by selecting the chat name and navigating to the Advanced Chat Privacy option. Advanced Chat Privacy is rolling out to everyone on the latest version of WhatsApp. The company says that it plans to improve the feature further to offer even more protection.

This announcement comes in the wake of a controversy surrounding the AI feature introduced in WhatsApp. The app displays a Meta AI icon in the bottom right of the Chats page. While Meta/WhatsApp argue this is an optional feature akin to Channels and Status, there is in fact no option to disable Meta's AI in WhatsApp.

Source: WhatsApp