We are in the era of social networks, relationships through screens, messaging applications… although participating in the use of these applications can lead to us losing some privacy along the way.
When we download apps like WhatsApp many times we do not usually pay attention to the permissions that we grant them, nor do we bother to configure the privacy options later, something essential if we want to strengthen our privacy and security. WhatsApp offers us this possibility and doing it is very simple.
No we can simply disappear, but we can be a little more invisible. We can prevent, for example, that they see our last connection, our profile picture, whether or not we have seen the messages they have sent us, etc.
connection time
So that no one can know when was the last time you entered the application, you must remove last connection time.
You must enter the application, go to ‘Settings’, ‘Account’, ‘Privacy’ and ‘Time of last time’ (these are the same steps on both Android and iPhone). Here you must choose who can see the connection time: everyone (even people who are not in your address book but have your phone number), only your contacts or nobody. Note that if you choose the “nobody” option, you will not be able to see the connection time of your contacts either.
Profile picture
You can also make your photo of profile is only visible to your contacts and prevent the rest of the people you don’t have added to your agenda from seeing it. To do this you must go to ‘Settings’, ‘Account’, ‘Privacy’ and in ‘Profile picture’ choose the ‘My contacts’ option. You also have the possibility to choose ‘nobody’, so that it would not be visible to your contacts either.
the blue check
In the ‘Privacy’ section, within ‘Settings’ and ‘Account’, you will find the option to disable the double check or double blue tick. At the bottom of the menu you will see a box with the name ‘Read Receipts’. By default it will appear activated, which means that by default we have the blue double check activated. If we uncheck the box and therefore the read confirmation, then our contacts will stop seeing the double blue tick when you read their messages. Keep in mind that you will not receive confirmation when they read yours either.
put it on pause
If we ‘pause’ the application or, what is the same, we force stop WhatsApp, then our contacts they will only see the messages they send us with a simple tick, that is, with the sent tick, but not with the received tick. This is a simple trick to avoid receiving messages for a while without having to uninstall the application or turn off the phone.
To do this process on Android we must go to the ‘Settings’ section of the phone, ‘General’, enter ‘Applications’ and search for ‘WhatsApp’. In the ‘Application information’ we must click on the button ‘Force stop’ and we will stop receiving messages and notifications until we enter the application again.
In iOS the process is different: we have to do a quick double press on the circular button of the iPhone. At that moment, all the applications that we have open in the background will appear. We will select WhatsApp and slide our finger from bottom to top.
Applications
Currently, on the market there are applications that help us become invisible on social networks with certain advantages. For example, for those who do not want their last connection time to be seen or to know when they read the messages, there are ‘apps’ that allow all this, but with the advantage that they can gossip the last connection time and receive the blue ticks from their conversations. One of these applications is Stealth Appwhich has a paid version without that costs more than WhatsApp itself.