Manage your WhatsApp privacy: Follow these steps, make your experience better

WhatsApp has become an invaluable part of our lives allowing users to communicate through text, audio and video sharing, among others. But, the instant messaging platform has been in the firing line over the last 18 months for privacy concerns. However, there are a few features that allow you to decide and manage WhatsApp privacy settings. Using this, you can decide who and for how long can see your WhatsApp Status. Also, you can decide who can see if you have read a message or not. 

WhatsApp Status - 

WhatsApp Status allows you to share text, photos, videos and animated GIFs that disappear after 24 hours. In order to send and receive status updates to and from your contacts, both you and your contacts must have each other's phone numbers saved in your address book. Here’s how you can set your privacy on Android, iPhone and Windows phone - 

To change these settings, simply go to WhatsApp > tap More options  > Settings > Account > Privacy.

If you want to change status privacy, you can - visit the status screen, tap privacy on the top-left corner of your corner. Then choose who can see your status. 

Turn off read receipts -

For turning off read receipts - you can go to the setting, click on account opt for privacy and select disable on the option. However, if you wish to not share your last seen then you will also not be able to see other people’s last seen. Also, you cannot hide your online or typing status. Last Seen refers to the last time the contact used WhatsApp. Through our privacy settings, you have the option to control who can see your Last Seen. 

Further, if you desire to turn off read receipts, you will not be able to see the same of other people. Notably, read receipts are always sent for group chats. Meanwhile, if a contact has disabled read receipts, that would mean you will not be able to see that they have viewed your status updates as well.