Remaining safe on WhatsApp: Here are a few steps you can take
Have you grown weary of worrying for your safety and security on instant-messaging platform WhatsApp? Are you fearful of someone, someday perhaps, stealing your identity or hacking into your phone?
Well, here are a few steps you can take to ensure all your information is kept safe when you use WhatsApp.
Last seen, profile picture and about: You should make sure that your privacy settings on WhatsApp are set at least on My Contacts. It isn't a good idea to keep your profile picture public, especially if it features underage people.
Control who can see when you last logged in
One way to learn your habits is when people get to see when you last logged in to WhatsApp. Make sure you select Nobody when it comes to privacy settings regarding the last seen status.
You never know who may be the "leak" when it comes to your texting or general habits.
About section: How much should you divulge?
Don't consider this your social media profile where you need to post all about yourself and give away important details such as age, designation, or CNIC number on the WhatsApp about section.
You can keep this option public if you are a business account or a company but take care to divulge information which is only necessary and one that you need to make public.
Again, important information shared from your end can result in hackings and identity thefts.
Privacy Settings for Groups: this is the most important privacy setting, and it should be updated very often when you add a new contact in your address book. The best option to select is “My Contacts Except…” > Select All, and you have to repeat this operation every time you add a new contact.
What happens is, you won't be automatically added to a group when someone adds you to it. An invitation will be sent to you. This gives the user the power to make his/her decision that they either want to join the group or not.
This is very important because any strangers might add you in bad groups, that trigger WhatsApp servers in order to ban you.
Privacy Settings for Status:
You should always have the control over things you send to your status updates. By default, when you send a new status update, WhatsApp forwards it to all your contacts but, in some cases, you might want to exclude specific contacts using “My Contacts Except…”. In our opinion the best option you can select is “Only Share With…”, selecting your close friends.