WhatsApp began work on a new privacy setting last year that allowed users to hide profile photos, latest views, and information information from specific people in their contact lists. Its availability has been limited since it was in beta, but the company has announced that it will finally be rolling out to all of its users around the world on iPhone and Android devices.
🔒 To further protect your online privacy, we are rolling out new options for your privacy control settings 🔒
You can now select who from your contact list can see your Profile Photo, Info, and Last Viewed status. For more information follow this link: https://t.co/UGMCx2n70h
– WhatsApp (@WhatsApp) June 15, 2022
Up until now, you had three privacy options for your profile photo, last time you saw it, and About: Everyone, My Contacts, and Nobody. To these is added a fourth option called “My contacts except …” which is also available for state privacy.
WhatsApp’s new privacy setting is available to everyone
As the name suggests, the new option allows you to show your WhatsApp profile photo, last viewed and information information to people in your contact list except those you exclude. But it’s worth noting that if you don’t share your last seen with others, you won’t even be able to see theirs, just like read receipts, with the only difference that the latter always remains active for group chats even when having turned it off.
You can go to WhatsApp Settings > Account > Privacy menu on iPhones and Android devices to try out this new privacy control.
In addition to extensively implementing a new privacy control, WhatsApp has also announced some group calling features, which allow users to mute others during a group call and at the same time send messages to specific people. You’ll also see a banner when someone joins an off-screen group call.
Some new features for group calls @Whatsapp: You can now mute or text specific people during a call (great if someone forgets to mute!) and we’ve added a handy indicator so you can more easily see when multiple people join calls from big dimensions. pic.twitter.com/fxAUCAzrsy
– Will Cathcart (@wcathcart) June 16, 2022
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