WhatsApp’s “stealth” hidden settings to protect your messages from prying eyes – upgrade your phone now

THIS hidden “stealth” setting of WhatsApp protects people’s messages from prying eyes.

Privacy is hard to come by these days, but these simple smartphone hacks will make sure no one can see messages they don’t need.

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Stealth settings range from self-deleting messages to preventing people from seeing if you’ve read their just-sent message or if you’re online at all.

The first hack on WhatsApp to improve your privacy is “stealth mode”.

Stealth mode allows users to hide whether they are online or not.

It also lets a person decide who they want to allow to see their online status.

It was one of several new tools that Meta, WhatsApp’s parent company, unveiled in 2022.

Meta said it was created to keep messages “as private and secure as conversations in person.”

To enable it, go to “Privacy” in the settings, where you can set the option “Who can see when I’m online”.

Set it to “as last seen” and change the settings to “last seen” to exclude the contacts you don’t want to see when you’re online.

Disable the blue ticks in WhatsApp

The blue WhatsApp ticks reveal whether a person has read the message or not.

In case a WhatsApp user doesn’t want to reveal their presence, there’s a simple hack to disable the trademark ticks and leave people hanging instead.

Go to Settings, then navigate to “Privacy” and toggle the “Read Receipts” slider to the “Off” position.

Automatically delete your messages in WhatsApp

WhatsApp now has a new feature that automatically clears message history.

Users can set timers that delete messages between 24 hours and 90 days after they are sent.

To enable it, go to Settings, then “Privacy” and select “Disappearing Messages” to enable the timer.

This only applies to chats sent after the timer has been set.

Older messages must be deleted manually if no timer was previously set.

Disable “Last Seen” in WhatsApp

WhatsApp has a “last seen” feature that indicates when a user last viewed the app.

It’s a useful tool to see if a person is awake in a different time zone.

However, users can turn off the feature to avoid being bothered when they first check their phone in the morning.

Just go to Settings, then Privacy, and you can set Last Seen to Everyone, Nobody, My Contacts, or My Contacts Except, which allows users to exclude specific people.

Prevent people from forwarding your WhatsApp pictures or taking screenshots

When users send an image in WhatsApp, they can use the View Once feature.

The app then blocks downloading, forwarding or screenshots.

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