WhatsApp has provided us with a few ways to mask our activity on the app. If you don’t want people to see that you have opened their message then you can simply disable the blue checkmark. Some prefer not to have their statuses viewed by certain contacts (for a range of reasons) and the app provides a way to politely exclude those undesirables. The last way and probably the oldest is “last seen” which removes the time stamp in a WhatsApp chat and this feature may be getting a more personalised touch.
According to WABetaInfo, WhatsApp is working on allowing you to obscure your last seen status for individual contacts.
Much like with statuses you will be able to block certain contacts that you might feel should not see your last seen. This feature according to WABetaInfo may be extended to your profile picture and About in the setting menu.
It’s not clear when this feature will roll out to beta testers, WhatsApp may, as with a litany of other features that have been reported, choose to shelve it. However, this one might be likely because of WhatsApp seemingly trying to make up for its privacy policy blunder.
The final frontier for this kind of personalisation is choosing which contacts can see read receipts/blue tick. That would certainly cause a lot of interpersonal controversies especially if someone snitches.
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- Soon you will be able to appeal your ban from within WhatsApp
- WhatsApp is finally getting message reactions
- Archived WhatsApp chats will now remain in the dark, where they belong
- WhatsApp’s “view once” messages are better than nothing
- WhatsApp now lets you join group calls while they are in progress
Cover Image Credit: DW
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