It had been leaking for some time and we were even able to try it a few days ago, but it is now that Meta has finally announced the news officially and for the whole world: WhatsApp now has blocked chats, hidden and protected with fingerprint.
The blocked chat function adds to the already existing protection of the entire app with fingerprint or facial recognition. The big difference is that this lock can be applied to some chats and not all. Also, protected chats are hidden from the chat list.
So are WhatsApp blocked chats
WhatsApp has just released a new privacy feature: blocked chats. The goal of this new feature is protect your most secret chats from outside eyeseither because you have left someone’s mobile for a moment or because someone was looking over your shoulder.
Can protect any particular chat with mobile biometrics, so that it is necessary to use the fingerprint or facial recognition to access said chat. The difference with respect to WhatsApp fingerprint protection is that it applies to some chats and not all.
You can add this protection to any chat, but an important fact to keep in mind is that chats are only protected on that mobile and not on any other linked device. This, they say in Meta, will come later. The steps to protect a specific chat in WhatsApp with a fingerprint are the following:
- Open the chat in question
- Tap on the top bar to open the chat information window
- press chat lock
- Brand Lock this chat with fingerprint
- press okay in the window that is displayed
From now on, the chat will be included in the Blocked Chats folder, at the top of the chat list. This folder isn’t always shown, so you have to swipe down to reveal it when it’s hidden. To enter the folder you need to use the fingerprint of the mobile.
An important fact about chat blocking is that when you receive notifications from one of these chats, will not display the text content in the notification. You will instead see that you have “1 new message”, but not what chat or what it says. The Blocked Chats folder itself does not indicate if there are unread chats, although in the WhatsApp chats tab you will see that the number increases.
Notification of a new message in a chat that we have protected with a fingerprint
For now, WhatsApp chat blocking allows us to hide and hinder access to our most private chats in a simple way. In the future, Meta plans to add more options such as that these chats are also blocked on linked devices or that they can be protected with a different password from the mobile one.
More information | WhatsApp
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