WhatsApp Will Allow Users to Limit Visibility of Their Online Status, Leave Groups Unnoticed

On Tuesday, WhatsApp unveiled a number of new privacy features, among them the option for users to look through their messages secretly.

After the next privacy update, users will soon be able to restrict who may see when they are online, stop others from screen-shotting certain messages, and leave groups without alerting the entire channel.

According to the company's blog, this month, all WhatsApp users will begin to receive two of the new features that are being launched, which include the ability to choose who can see when you are active and the ability to quit group chats silently.

WhatsApp began obscuring users' online status to strangers by default in December. Even if this was a positive move, your whole list of contacts can still see if you are online as of now.

This year, WhatsApp introduced a number of other minor yet significant changes. The messenger has started enabling Android users to move their conversation history to iOS in addition to introducing emoji reactions and a means to speed up audio communications.

WhatsApp is owned by Facebook parent company Meta* and has more than 2 billion users worldwide. CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed the business would "keep building new ways to protect your messages and keep them as private and secure as face-to-face conversations" when announcing the changes on Facebook* and Instagram.

WhatsApp was, however, widely criticized last year after changing its terms of service. At the time, a portion of WhatsApp's privacy policy that described what was shared with parent company Facebook, which has a poor reputation when it comes to securing user data, sparked worries from many users.

Some users flocked to Signal, another well-liked encrypted texting messenger, as a result of the upgrade, as well as to Telegram.