The founder and CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, introduced three significant privacy policy features for Whatsapp, including the option to control who can see when you are online, exit a group chat silently, and prevent screenshots on view-once messages.

Earlier, users were able to hide their “last seen” status, but now WhatsApp is allowing users to hide the online indicator or they can choose whom they want to share the status with.

Secondly, users will have an option to exit group chats without leaving a notification on the chat. Normally, when someone joins or leaves a group chat, the app automatically notifies all other participants. But now, according to latest WhatsApp update, only the group admin will be notified when a user leaves the group.

Thirdly, users can send media files that can only be viewed once by using the “view once” messages option. These still allow taking screenshots of the media file. In order to prevent people from taking screenshots of their photographs or files, WhatsApp has introduced a screenshot blocking feature to its ‘view- once’ messaging.

Zuckerberg said, “We’ll keep building new ways to protect your messages and keep them as private and secure as face-to-face conversations”.

Ami Vora, Head of Product at Whatsapp said, “Over the years, we’ve added interlocking layers of protection to help keep the conversations secure, and the new feature is one way, we continue to deliver on our commitment to keeping messages private.”

Also Read: Whatsapp has updated its ‘Delete for Everyone’ message feature timings.