WhatsApp has been testing this privacy feature on Android for a while but now more users are seeing it roll out. But does it really work?
WhatsApp has added a new layer of privacy for its users, making sure their profile picture is not misused by taking screenshots. WhatsApp has already blocked people from taking screenshots of one-view photos or videos, and now the same feature is being enabled for your photos on the messaging app as well.
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Taking a screenshot is a serious invasion of a person’s privacy and in most cases you don’t even come to know when someone does that with your picture. But if that does happen with your profile picture on WhatsApp, the platform won’t give you an alert about the action, but ensure that the resulting screenshot of the picture is blank and they only see a black screen in front of them.
That’s what some people have noticed about the new feature, which hasn’t rolled out to everyone just yet but we expect that to happen in the next few days or even weeks. As we noticed with a recent WhatsApp Android beta version 2.24.4.25, the messaging app informs the owner with a message that says, “Can’t take a screenshot due to app restrictions.”
We could independently verify this tool and it does work. Having said that, we did notice that you can take the screenshot of the profile picture when you click on the contact from the chat window. WhatsApp doesn’t give people an option to change the settings of this privacy feature so that you don’t disable it, which is never the ideal thing for the privacy of the person. Facebook also has a similar tool called Profile Picture guard that blocks others from taking a screenshot of the photo.
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The fact that the screenshot tool blocker is now available to a wider user base suggests the official release is not far away. We’re not sure if and when iPhone users can expect the feature to roll out for their profile. Having this feature will give WhatsApp a big advantage over its rivals like Signal and Telegram that don’t have this tool.
