Actively engaging with govt to ensure safe user experience: Whatsapp
May 16, 2023
New Delhi [India], May 16 : Instant messaging service WhatsApp on Tuesday said it is actively engaging with the Government of India to consistently ensure a safe and secure user experience, including weeding out bad actors from the platform.
Responding to Union Minister of Electronics and IT, Ashwini Vaishnaw's acknowledgement of WhatsApp's commitment, WhatsApp Spokesperson said, "With reference to the recent endorsement (at the Press Conference for the launch of the Sanchar Saathi portal) from Ashwini Vaishnaw, Minister of Railways; Communications; and Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India, about WhatsApp's cooperation with the government to ensure customer safety, we are grateful for the Minister's acknowledgement of WhatsApp's continuous commitment to user safety."
"We have been actively engaging with the Government to consistently ensure a safe and secure user experience, including weeding out bad actors from the platform. WhatsApp is a leader among end-to-end encrypted services in protecting user safety and we continue to provide several in-built safety tools like Block & Report, Two-step verification, among others, along with regularly driving user safety education and awareness," the Spokesperson added.
This comes after Union Home Ministry's Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C) last week circulated an alert regarding WhatsApp numbers starting with +254, +84, +63 or other international numbers.
Meanwhile, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Monday announced a new WhatsApp feature called 'Chat Lock' to make users' most intimate conversations even more private.
This feature lets you protect your most intimate conversations with a password and secures them in a separate folder. When someone messages you and you have that chat locked, the sender's name and the content of the message will also be hidden.
Zuckerberg's announcement read, "We are excited to bring to you a new feature we're calling Chat Lock, which lets you protect your most intimate conversations behind one more layer of security."
"Locking a chat takes that thread out of the inbox and puts it behind its own folder that can only be accessed with your device password or biometric, like a fingerprint. It also automatically hides the contents of that chat in notifications too," he added.
In order to describe the need for the feature, Mark said, "We think this feature will be great for people who have reason to share their phones from time to time with a family member or those moments where someone else is holding your phone at the exact moment an extra special chat arrives. You can lock a chat by tapping the name of a one-to-one or group and selecting the lock option. To reveal these chats, slowly pull down on your inbox and enter your phone password or biometric."
"Over the next few months, we're going to be adding more options for Chat Lock, including locking for companion devices, creating a custom password for your chats so that you can use a unique password different from your phone's," Meta CEO concluded.
The official Twitter handle of Whatsapp followed the statement by officially announcing the feature later in the day.
"Privacy feature just dropped. With Chat Lock, now you can keep your most private and personal conversations under lock and key with a password," WhatsApp said in a tweet.
