WhatsApp is amping up its safety features
WhatsApp last year rolled out multi-device support, allowing people to use the same account on multiple devices simultaneously. To prevent unauthorized access, the company introduced a two-step verification system where you’d be required to verify your identity with a pre-configured six-digit PIN before you can log in. As another layer of security, the Meta-owned messaging app is now preparing to show login alerts. With the new feature, WhatsApp will notify you if someone tries to access your account. It will show up as an approval request, complete with the time of the attempted login and the device model number. If it is a genuine login attempt by you or under your authorization, you can approve the request. Otherwise, simply tap on “Do Not Allow” to deny login on other devices.
Another new safety feature coming to WhatsApp is the ability to hide your phone number in Communities. The latter is a fairly new group messaging system on the app that hosts multiple sub-groups. This is an ideal messaging feature for large organizations or schools. Admins can create multiple sub-groups of relevant people such as employees from a certain division or students of a class. While you may be familiar with the members of your sub-group, that may not necessarily be the case with the members of other sub-groups in the same Community. As such, WhatsApp will let you hide your phone number from those that you don’t share a group with. Perhaps your number will be hidden by default. You can manually choose to share your number if you wish. Note that this feature isn’t available for the existing non-Community group chats on WhatsApp.
These WhatsApp features are still under development
WABetaInfo spotted the new WhatsApp features within the latest bet versions of the popular messaging app. Both features are still under development and may take some time before rolling out to users, probably starting with beta testers. A wider public rollout should follow afterward. We will keep an eye on these developments and will let you know when we have more information.
