WhatsApp working to strengthen user privacy. The world’s most used application for instant messaging would be focusing its efforts on an upgrade. The new feature should allow users to activate a timer to match the photos they share, on groups or in individual chats. In this way, after the indicated time has elapsed, the photos willthey will self-destruct‘and will no longer be available to interlocutors for future use (unless the user shares them again).
To reveal the novelty, writes laleggepertutti.it, was the specialized magazine Wabetainfo. A change that goes in the direction of a strengthening of user privacy that occurs not by chance: recently, the app’s controversial policies on the protection of personal data have been the source of numerous controversies (to learn more, read here: New WhatsApp privacy conditions: what changes).
Just to silence them, WhatsApp wants to implement new features like this, also because there is a haemorrhage of users and a crisis of trust to remedy (to learn more read here: Goodbye to WhatsApp: the exodus to Signal has started).
It is believed that self-destructing photos can put a stop to the numerous privacy violations that occur using the app. Certainly it is a step forward: think of revenge porn (to learn more, read here: What is revenge porn) and the photos and hard videos that engaged couples exchange, only to happen, after the breakup, that all this material continue to remain in the memory of the ex with the danger of illicit use for revenge.
Of course it is not the panacea for all ills: once the timer is set and the time has elapsed, the content becomes invisible to the recipient. But the recipient may also have extracted a copy earlier, for example by taking a screenshot of the received photo.
In short: those who want will still be able to take advantage of the content that is sent to them. The news, however, is in the fact that the application, which boasts one billion and 600 million active users, is gaining greater sensitivity towards the right to privacy. It is also not excluded that the inhibition of the screenshot before the content disappears cannot be implemented in the future.
For now we will have to be content with seeing the counter appear to the left of the writing space. Once self-destructed, the images can no longer be imported, shared or used in any way. Anyone who leaves a WhatsApp chat where content has been shared with the timer and returns after the time to use it has expired, will not even be able to view them.
For texts, WhatsApp already had something similar, with messages being deleted after a week and no longer visible. But on the photos, Marco Zuckerberg’s messaging app arrives late: rival Telegram, one of WhatsApp’s main competitors, has had such a feature for four years, complete with a warning to the sender if the recipient has taken a screenshot .