WhatsApp will hide ‘Last Seen’ from strangers as default
The Meta-owned chat service will increase the options for when messages can automatically disappear; users can already set the feature to delete a message seven days after it’s sent, but with the incoming update, users will be able to set messages to disappear after 24 hours or 90 days as well.
“With Disappearing Messages, you choose how long your messages stay around. Set to default on all new chats, choose the duration, and get more control of your conversations. Not every message needs to stick around forever. Rolling out over the next few weeks,” the chat service wrote on their official Twitter handle.
“For people who choose to switch on default disappearing messages, we will display a message in your chats that tells people this is the default you’ve chosen. This makes clear it’s nothing personal – it’s a choice you’ve made about how you want to communicate with everyone on WhatsApp moving forward. Though of course, if you need a particular conversation to remain permanent, it’s easy to switch a chat back,” WhatsApp added.
“We’ve become accustomed to leaving a digital copy of just about everything we type without even thinking about it. It’s become the equivalent of a note-taker following us around making a permanent record of everything we’ve said. This is why we introduced disappearing messages last year, and more recently, a way for photos and videos to immediately disappear after being viewed once.”
Moreover, WhatsApp is rolling out a new privacy measure that hides your “last seen” status from people you don’t know or haven’t chatted with in the app, reported WABetaInfo. The feature will not affect chats from people who you have added to your contacts.
WhatsApp is the most popular messaging service in 100 countries and currently has 2.5 billion users worldwide.
