I have seen photo galleries that are equal parts photos taken with the camera and screenshots. I get it, mine used to look like that but my screenshots were of memes. Some of you guys like to archive your chat conversations in screenshot form.
For now, you can keep doing that for the most part. However, the creeps among us that love taking screenshots of people’s profile pictures, just know that your days are numbered.
Okay, I have taken my fair share of profile pics over the years but I was justified, unlike some of you guys. It doesn’t matter now, WhatsApp is working on shutting all that down.
WABetaInfo found a new feature being tested in the latest beta version of WhatsApp on Android. WhatsApp will restrict anyone, including your contacts, from taking a screenshot of your profile picture.
If, or more accurately, when they try to take a screenshot they will get an error message saying, “Can’t take screenshot due to app restrictions.”
We can expect to see the feature introduced to iOS and the desktop. However, this won’t be coming to WhatsApp Web, on Windows at least, because you cannot restrict screenshots, you can’t disable or block them from a browser.
Which brings us to the workarounds that the dedicated screenshotter has at their disposal.
As discussed above, the user can easily screenshot your profile pic if they use WhatsApp Web. Windows would have to be updated to allow the browser using HTML/CSS/JavaScript to control/restrict OS functions like screenshotting and I wouldn’t hold my breath for that happening.
The other workaround can actually never be defeated. It will always remain effective against all this privacy stuff. A person can just take a picture of the screen with another device. There is nothing you can do about this.
However, these two workarounds require the person to have another device and that should stop many a screenshotter. The WhatsApp Web one requires a computer and the picture one requires another phone. Not everyone has those lying around.
What I would like is for WhatsApp to tell us when people take screenshots of our chats or profile pics. Snapchat has been doing this for years and I would love to see it in WhatsApp. I think that could be a good deterrent, it would force people to use the two-device method to screenshot.
Do remember you can limit who can view your profile picture in the first place in the settings: Settings > Privacy > Profile Photo. That’s the least you can do if you don’t want people gawking at you.
Fun fact: You may have heard people refer to the profile pic as a DP and that stands for Display Picture. Some apps still call the PP the DP.
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