Use WhatsApp’s Privacy Check to double check your privacy and keep your messages safe!

WhatsApp recently launched a privacy checkup feature which makes it easy to walk through the most important privacy settings and choose the options that make sense for you.

WhatsApp is a pretty good messaging app. It provides end-to-end encryption, which means only you and the recipient have access to the messages and calls that you make. WhatsApp also allows for encrypted backups, and enables people to communicate cross-platform (iPhone to Android and vice-versa).

One thing to know if you use WhatsApp is that if you use it to communicate with a business — this is called “business messaging” — you give up some privacy. If you communicate with a business account, your chats and their contents might be used for marketing purposes, including Meta’s advertising, and therefore are not private. Business accounts are explicitly marked in the contact card (if you click on the phone number in WhatsApp it will take you to the contact card).

That being said, WhatsApp is still a secure way to communicate with the people in your life. Last year, I published an article about security and privacy settings in WhatsApp which is worth checking out as well.

WhatsApp - make sure you are as secure and private as possible

WhatsApp’s Privacy Checkup

WhatsApp recently launched a Privacy Checkup which is a really easy way to go through all the critical privacy settings and double-check that you have the right settings enabled for you.

Here’s a quick run-through on how to use it and my recommended settings.

1. Open up WhatsApp, go to “Settings”, and in the search bar at the top, type “checkup”. Select “Privacy Checkup”.

   

2. The checkup will guide you through 4 categories — here are my recommendations.