In response to government criticism, three new capabilities are being added to the end-to-end encrypted messaging app as the business launches a UK-wide advertising campaign.
Under new privacy capabilities, WhatsApp users will be able to leave groups without everyone knowing.
People will also be able to restrict who can see when they are online, and “View Once” messages will no longer be susceptible to screenshots.
Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive officer of WhatsApp’s parent firm Meta, describes the features as measures to keep users’ chats as “secure as face-to-face talks.”
They are being released in conjunction with a global advertising campaign beginning in the United Kingdom and India.
When participants on WhatsApp quit group chats at present, the entire chat receives a message that they have gone, potentially garnering unwelcome attention. According to the company, only administrators will now receive notifications.
The software also broadcasts to all of a user’s contacts when they are online and have the app open; users can choose to share this information.
WhatsApp had previously cautioned users to “only share photographs or videos with ‘View Once’ enabled to trustworthy contacts” since it was feasible to take a snapshot or screen recording of the media before it disappeared.
Some perceived the move as another feature that WhatsApp plagiarised from Snapchat after the introduction of statuses in 2017.
In his post introducing the latest WhatsApp upgrades, Mr. Zuckerberg wrote: “We’ll keep creating innovative ways to protect your communications and keep them as private and secure as face-to-face chats.”
The advertising effort, which will include a billboard on Wandsworth Roundabout in southwest London, comes as Meta faces an increasing number of criticisms about how its privacy features could be abused by criminals attempting to dodge the law.
Last month two senior technical directors at GCHQ, the UK’s cyber intelligence agency, published a report assessing how social media platforms expose minors to sexual exploitation online.
Earlier this year, a government-funded advertising campaign titled No Place To Hide intended to draw attention to the difficulties that end-to-end encrypted texting presented to law enforcement while investigating crimes involving child sexual abuse.
Meta has emphasised repeatedly that it believes end-to-end encryption is the only method to assure that users can communicate securely without a third party listening in.
In the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica incident, Mr. Zuckerberg revealed in 2019 his intentions to improve privacy on the platform by preventing Meta from seeing the contents of user-shared conversations, similar to how it cannot access the contents of WhatsApp communications.
However, these adjustments have not yet been deployed across the company’s other platforms due to worries that they might prevent law enforcement from detecting incidences of child grooming and abuse on its platforms and potentially cause a secret government injunction.
