The WhatsApp message app, which is owned by Facebook, is used freely in all parts of the world except in China, where it has been officially banned since September 2017. By some estimates, WhatsApp is used worldwide by some 2 billion people, who send 100 billion messages every day.
One of the signature features of WhatsApp is the end-to-end encryption, which has kept your conversations and other contents safe from the prying eyes of others, including law enforcement.
Well, by the end of this month, the app will add a new feature that allows automatic deletion of your messages and graphical or video contents seven days after they have been sent or received. This disappearing message feature is being added to WhatsApp to “help you cut down on your digital footprint.” If you have something to hide, the feature is a great way to de-clutter your devices in general, so there’s less to see if someone were to look.
The feature will be rolled out globally by month end. WhatsApp in the common platforms – Android, iOS, Web, Desktop, and KaiOS – will support the new feature.Once the disappearing message feature has been fully rolled out, it will be available as a new option in the Contact section in WhatsApp. The setting won’t wipe out older messages, and will only affect new messages once it’s enabled by either the sender or receiver. You can turn on the disappearing feature for direct messages, but in groups it’s the administrator that has to enable or disable disappearing messages. To enable the disappearing message feature in WhatsApp follow this procedure: >Open WhatsApp chat>Tap the contact’s name >Tap Disappearing messages, and, when prompted >Tap CONTINUE >Select On. To disable disappearing messages: >Open WhatsApp chat >Tap the contact’s name >Tap Disappearing messages, and, when prompted >Tap CONTINUE >Select Off.
Facebook rationalizes the introduction of the feature as follows:“While it’s great to hold on to memories from friends and family, most of what we send doesn’t need to be everlasting. Our goal is to make conversations on WhatsApp feel as close to in-person as possible, which means they shouldn’t have to stick around forever.”
Note that unlike competing tools, WhatsApp does not yet allow granular options — an hour, a day, a month — for the time until messages disappear. For now, it’s hardcoded to seven days, even though Facebook Messenger, a sister platform to WhatsApp, offers granular controls for disappearing messages in its end-to-end encrypted Secret Conversation feature. Of course, disappearing messages is not new at all. Apps including Telegram, Signal, Wire and Snapchat already offer such an option. In fact an article appeared in this column in Daily Trust entitled “Snapchat, the ephemeral messaging app” on 27 February 2017.
Facebook rationalizes its currently hard-coded seven-day policy as follows: “We’re starting with seven days because we think it offers peace of mind that conversations aren’t permanent, while
remaining practical so you don’t forget what you were chatting about,” the company says in a blog post. “The shopping list or storeaddress you received a few days ago will be there while you needit, and then disappear after you don’t.”
There are several features of the new capability that you should beaware of. The seven-day limit will exist regardless of whether a message gets read or not, and the disappearing message timing begins when it is sent or received.
“The way it’s currently designed is to give the sender confidence that after seven days their message is gone. The messages have no concept of being seen, for them to disappear, so they will disappear regardless of read status,” a spokesperson reportedly said. The new disappearing feature will not be automatically switched on in your phone. That is, you have to proactively change the settings required to turn the feature on. There are other features: After you have activated the new feature, if a message recipient doesn’t open WhatsApp in the seven day period, the message will disappear on them, as pointed out above, though WhatsApp is saying that a preview of the message might still be displayed in notifications until WhatsApp is opened.
Furthermore, when you reply to a message, the initial message is quoted. If you reply to a disappearing message, the quoted text might remain in the chatafter seven days. Also, if a disappearing message is forwarded to a chat where the user has disappearing messages off, the message won’t disappear in the forwarded chat, and if you create a backup before a message disappears, the disappearing message will be included in the backup. Disappearing messages will be deleted when you restore from a backup!
Wired.com wants you to have these facts: “On Android, WhatsApp defaults to automatically save media to your camera roll. That setting will persist even with disappearing messages unless you manually change it, meaning that images and other files may be auto-deleted from the chat but will still be saved on yourphone. And even if you have WhatsApp’s auto save feature turned off, the people you chat with may not. ”The absence of granular controls in the new disappearing message feature of WhatsApp is going to be a drag that Facebook will have to address sooner than later.
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