Introducing Advanced Chat Privacy: Enhanced Protection for Your Most Sensitive Conversations

The foundation of privacy on WhatsApp is that your personal messages and calls are protected by end-to-end encryption so that only the sender and recipient can see, listen to or share them. From there, we’ve built multiple layers of privacy, like disappearing messages and chat lock, that take privacy one step further.

Today we’re introducing our latest layer for privacy called "Advanced Chat Privacy." This new setting available in both chats and groups helps prevent others from taking content outside of WhatsApp for when you may want extra privacy.

When the setting is on, you can block others from exporting chats, auto-downloading media to their phone, and using messages for AI features. That way everyone in the chat has greater confidence that no one can take what is being said outside the chat.

WhatsApp groups are increasingly an extension of our real world networks, some of which are far closer than others. We think this feature is best used when talking with groups where you may not know everyone closely but are nevertheless sensitive in nature, like talking about health challenges in a support group or organizing your community about something important to you.

You can turn this on by tapping the chat name, then tapping on Advanced Chat Privacy. This is the first version of this feature and we’re planning to add more to it so that it will eventually include even more protections.

This new setting is rolling out to everyone on the latest version of WhatsApp.