O WhatsApp is making a new feature available for group chats, which can help prevent certain content from “leaving” those chats. The new feature prevents participants in a chat from forwarding the content to third parties, or possibly sharing it through other means.
This feature is intended to add an additional layer of security and privacy to conversations where sensitive or private content may be shared and which is not expected to be shared outside of the conversation.
The feature is available for group chats, but also for individual chats where you want a little more protection. For now, it needs to be activated by the group chat administrator or by one of the parties in the individual chat.
If activated, message forwarding is disabled directly. In addition, the automatic download of multimedia content is also disabled, preventing it from being saved on devices. Access with Meta’s AI platforms is also blocked, to prevent data from being shared with the company’s models.
According to WhatsApp, the feature is focused on conversations that may contain people who are not relatively close to the user, but where topics that may be considered sensitive are shared.
The platform also states that, in addition to the protections currently applied, more tools and ways to block content sharing are expected to emerge in the near future. The company also indicates that it may take a few weeks for the system to become active on all accounts on the messaging platform.
