There are many reasons why you want to protect your smartphone from prying eyes. The world’s most popular messenger service WhatsApp is also aware of this. Therefore, additional privacy measures for users are likely to come soon. This includes protecting individual chats using biometrics. How this has worked so far and what awaits WhatsApp users.
Depending on how you have set your lock screen, the contents of messages can appear on it. While these notifications can be configured in the system settings of Android or iOS, some privacy options are also implemented in the apps themselves.
So far, WhatsApp as a whole can also be protected using a fingerprint. In other words: In order to be able to open the app at all, biometric verification is necessary. It has now been announced that the current Android beta test for WhatsApp version 2.23.21.8 is testing the function of protecting individual chats with fingerprints. A beta tester on the short message platform X shows that the corresponding menus have already been created.
It is currently not known when WhatsApp will enable this function for all users. Until then, users have to be content with the previous function of protecting the entire app with a fingerprint.
To do this, iPhone users have to navigate through the sub-items “Account”, “Data protection”, “Screen lock” in the settings. Here you can set that Touch ID (fingerprint) or Face ID (face recognition) should be required to unlock the app. For Android users, the option can be found under “More options”, “Settings”, “Account”, “Privacy”. On both operating systems, users are then asked to set a period of inactivity after which WhatsApp should be automatically blocked.
Aside from these software-related measures, smartphone users can also purchase special films for their cell phone displays that make it almost impossible to read from the side or from a distance. The so-called “privacy protection films” refract the light from the screen so that the displayed image is only clearly visible from a frontal angle – precisely from the perspective from which you usually use your cell phone.
