WhatsApp's Brand Campaign Highlights Its Privacy Protection Features: Know Everything

Meta-owned WhatsApp is rolling out the India edition of its global brand campaign, in a bid to create awareness about its layers of protection that offer users more privacy and control over their conversations.

WhatsApp intends to educate users in the coming weeks on each privacy feature through short films. Image: Getty

WhatsApp is rolling out the India edition of its global brand campaign to create awareness about its interlocking layers of protection that offer users more privacy and control over their conversations while messaging on the platform. WhatsApp campaign focuses on educating users on the messaging platform's built-in layers of privacy protections that have been added over the years, including three new privacy features -- leaving groups silently, controlling who can see when you're online and screenshot blocking for "view once" messages.

The new features were unveiled earlier this month by Meta-owned WhatsApp as part of a global campaign, adding to a host of existing privacy features, and demonstrating how multiple layers of privacy controls come together to provide users more protection when having a truly private conversation when messaging.

“At WhatsApp, privacy is in our DNA and over the years, we have consistently added layers of protection through product-features that empower people with more control over their messages. This is our way of extending awareness and assurance to our users on how the new and existing built-in layers of protection help you message freely without compromising on your privacy.

"We want users to know that they always have a safe and private space on WhatsApp, no matter where they are! We feel it's a great privilege that two billion people around the world trust WhatsApp to deliver their personal messages everyday and this campaign is an affirmation of WhatsApp’s continued commitment to protecting their private conversations," Avinash Pant, Director - Marketing at Meta India, said in a statement.

The world's most popular messaging platform aims to educate users in the coming weeks on each privacy feature through short films which will highlight their benefits and the steps to activate them so that users can take advantage of WhatsApp’s built-in protection, which include:

Leave Groups Silently: Users will be able to exit a group privately without having to notify everyone.

Choose Who Can See When You’re Online: For the times you want to keep your online presence private, WhatsApp is introducing the ability to select who can and can’t see when you’re online.

Screenshot Blocking for View Once Messages: WhatsApp is enabling screenshot blocking for View Once messages for an added layer of protection. This feature is being tested and will be rolled out to users soon.

Default E2EE: WhatsApp always protects your personal conversations with end-to-end encryption by default (regardless of device) so that no one, not even WhatsApp, except your intended recipients can see or hear your private personal conversations.

Encrypted Backups: WhatsApp offers the ability to backup your chat history with end-to-end encryption so it’s secure and only accessible to you with a password or encryption key. No other messaging service at our scale provides this level of additional security for your messages.

Disappearing Messages: WhatsApp’s disappearing messages offer peace of mind with the ability to set durations for disappearing messages: 24 hours, 7 days, or 90 days so users can send photos and videos that disappear after they have been opened.

Two-step Verification: For more protection, the two-step verification feature gives users the option to set a unique six-digit PIN that can be used when registering your phone number with WhatsApp again. This optional feature adds another layer of security to their WhatsApp account.

Block and Report: Users can choose to stop receiving messages and calls from certain contacts by blocking them and reporting them if they are sending problematic content or spam.