WhatsApp new Privacy setting prevents users from getting added to random groups

Have you ever had the horrific experience of getting added to a random WhatsApp group by one of your contacts and receiving spam messages? WhatsApp’s new Privacy feature may just help you avoid such a situation in the future.

WhatsApp Inc has introduced a new privacy feature that gives users the control of who can add them in groups. The feature was being tested in beta since February. Now available for public, users can select one of the three options and prevent anyone from adding them to a WhatsApp group without their consent. "WhatsApp groups continue to connect family, friends, coworkers, classmates and more. As people turn to groups for important conversations, users have asked for more control over their experience. Today, we're introducing a new privacy setting and invite system to help you decide who can add you to groups", WhatsApp said in a statement.

To enable it, users can go to WhatsApp settings, tap Account > Privacy > Groups and select one of three options — ‘Nobody’, ‘My Contacts’, and ‘Everyone’. ‘Nobody’ prevents anyone from adding the user to a WhatsApp group. ‘My Contacts’ would allow people in the user’s contact list to add them in a group. However, users would get an invite through a private message giving them an option to join the group. The invite would be valid for 72 hours before it expires. For ‘everybody’, users would get added to the group without any need of an invitation. 

The feature has been rolled out on Wednesday to some users and would be available to the rest in the coming weeks.

The new feature comes after many concerns and questions asked by the Indian government on the spread of false and incorrect information on WhatsApp. The company recently announced a fact-checking feature to verify news and combat rumours. The 'Checkpoint Tipline’ feature allows to send messages and images to a WhatsApp number (+91-9643000888) and check its authenticity. The company is also working on a feature that lets users know how many times a message has been forwarded on the platform. The new features are reportedly called ‘Forwarding Info”, and “Frequently Forwarded”. The ‘Forwarding info’ would inform users about the number of times a message has been forwarded previously. When enabled, this feature would be available in the ‘message info’ section of the app. Messages that have been forwarded more than four times would be highlighted as ‘Frequently Forwarded’. In such a case, the message bubble would have a different label above the message.