Maintaining your privacy is important to staying safe while using the Internet. Therefore, most apps add privacy and security settings to allow the user to control who they can communicate with through the apps and who can see their messages. This applies to WhatsApp, the messaging app that has more than 2 billion users worldwide.
WhatsApp allows changing privacy settings to control who can see your account picture, who can see the last time you used the service, and many other privacy settings, which we explain below:
How to change privacy settings for the last time on WhatsApp:
The Last Seen feature lets other users know when you were last on WhatsApp, but if you don't want to share this information, you can easily change your settings by following these steps:
- Open the WhatsApp settings on your phone.
- Select (Privacy) Privacy and click on the (Last live and online broadcast) option.
- Select one of the four options in the (last seen) section:
- Everyone: All WhatsApp users can see when you last used the app.
- My Contacts: People in your contacts list can see when you last used the app.
- My contacts except...: People in your contact list can see the last time you used the app, except for people you select.
- Nobody: People who use WhatsApp do not know when they last used the app.
4. Enable one of the following options in the WhatsApp presence section:
- everyone.
- Same last seen settings: In this case, WhatsApp will apply the same settings that you specified in the (last seen) section.
To change your WhatsApp account picture privacy settings:
To choose who can see your WhatsApp profile picture, follow these steps:
- Open the WhatsApp application and go to (Settings) Settings.
- Select Privacy and click on the Profile Picture option.
- Activate one of the following four options:
- everyone.
- My contact details.
- My contacts except .. (... except my contacts).
- Nobody.
To change WhatsApp status privacy settings:
Statuses in WhatsApp are similar to Stories in the Instagram app, which can be used to post photos, videos, texts, links, and voice memos.
To restrict who can see your status messages, follow these steps:
- Open the WhatsApp application and go to (Settings) Settings.
- Select Privacy and click on the Status option.
- Enable one of the following options to restrict who can see your status updates:
- My contact details.
- My contacts except... (..my contacts except).
- Share only with... If you select this setting, you can select a specific group of contacts with whom you want to share presence.
How to block users on WhatsApp:
You can add someone to your contacts and they keep starting to send spam in WhatsApp and someone will be able to access your phone number and start sending messages in WhatsApp without you knowing who they are. In these cases, you can block or report the user who is harassing you directly from WhatsApp by following these steps:
- Open a WhatsApp conversation with the person you want to block.
- Click on the three dots button in the upper right corner and select More.
- Click Block or Report Options.
If you are using an iPhone, open a chat on WhatsApp with the person you want to block and tap on the username shown above. At the bottom of the page you will find the option to block and the option to report. Click one of them.