WhatsApp is a great app. It is fast, easy to use and a convenient to stay in touch with people now that almost everyone uses it.
But
of late, WhatsApp has added a number of features that makes it a
privacy risk. If you are not careful, it is even easy to figure out your
daily moment and activity from the information that is displayed on
your WhatsApp profile. In some cases, a person doesn't even have to chat
with you. All he or she needs to stalk to you is your phone number.
So how do you ward off the stalkers and weirdos or just plain irritants? Well, there are some very simple steps:
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Start blocking people:
We are sure you already know this but it is worth repeating: block
numbers of people who are irritating you. To block a contact, open the
chat window for that particular contact, tap on the "three dots" on the
top right, select "more" and select "block". If you think the person
deserves forgiveness, you can unblock him or her later.
--
Hide you profile photo:
On WhatsApp anyone can see your profile photo. To change this click on
the "three dots" in the main WhatsApp window and select "settings". In
the next window, select "account" and then "privacy".
In the
section "Who can see my personal info", select "Profile photo" and set
the setting to "Nobody" if you are really paranoid or annoyed at
strangers complimenting you, or "my contacts" if you don't mind some of
your friends seeing your profile photo from time to time.
--
Turn off last seen:
Hiding "last seen" is one single biggest step you can take to safeguard
your privacy on WhatsApp. In the same, "Who can see my personal info",
select "Last seen" and then choose the option that you want.
--
Similarly, you can also hide status message from strangers or from
everyone. Though if you want to hide it from everyone, you can just use a
blank status message. That will do the same thing.
--
Turn off Blue Ticks:
A few months ago, WhatsApp added this read receipt feature which shows a
user when the message has been read by turning the two grey ticks to
blue. While it is a useful feature, it also takes away a bit of freedom
you have in how and when you respond to messages from others. Once you
have seen a message and once the sender of that message knows it, there
is an obvious pressure on you to respond.
To turn off the Blue
Ticks feature, go to section "Messaging" in the Privacy window. Clear
the "Read receipt" selection or in other words uncheck it.
What if you are using an iPhone
The
above mentioned tips are for WhatsApp on Android. But what if you are
using it on an iPhone? Well, in that case you can access the privacy
settings by clicking on the gearwheel placed on the bottom right of the
WhatsApp window.
However, on iPhone it seems WhatsApp doesn't
allow turning off the blue ticks. It can be done but then for that you
have to "jailbreak" the iPhone. But you can change other settings.
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