Only those you know — how to protect from strangers on WhatsApp

WhatsApp has long been the main means of communication for millions, and therefore attracts spammers and scammers who send unwanted messages and calls. Fortunately, the messenger itself allows you to almost completely fence yourself off from strangers, although the option you need is not hidden on the surface.

NV writes about it.

How to protect yourself from strangers on WhatsApp

The first step is to change the general profile visibility settings. In the mobile app, open the Settings section, select Privacy, and set the Last Activity Time, Profile Photo, About, and Status to My Contacts or No One. This way, unknown subscribers won't see your details and will lose motivation to start a conversation.

The group chat category is equally important: in the same privacy section, go to Groups and specify either My Contacts or My Contacts Excluding... — the latter option allows you to exclude even friends you don't trust. This way, third-party users won't be able to add you to new groups without your consent, and spam emails will lose another access channel.

When the annoying number has already written or called, open the dialogue, click on the subscriber's address at the top of the screen, and select Block or Block and report spam. After that, the contact will be blacklisted and will no longer be able to bother you with messages or calls.

While there is no single magic "tick box", these few steps go a long way towards increasing digital silence: you remain accessible to your loved ones while keeping spammers and scammers out of your personal space.

As a reminder, WhatsApp uses end-to-end encryption (E2EE), which already guarantees a high level of privacy protection. Thanks to this, no one can access your messages. In addition, the messenger provides additional tools that allow you to further strengthen the protection of personal data.

We also wrote that WhatsApp has started implementing the new feature — the "Advanced Chat Privacy" setting. It is designed to prevent the transfer of correspondence outside the app: after activation, users can prohibit the export of chat history, as well as the automatic saving of media files to the device's memory.