Although WhatsApp is an application that is ubiquitous in our daily lives, it is far from perfect. There are still many aspects to be improved, and one of them is about privacy: anyone who knows our phone number can send us messages, and if we do not have the right configuration, they can see our profile photo and take it with a method as simple as a screenshot. But this too is about to end.

What’s new in beta version. And the latest test version of WhatsApp (beta version 2.24.4.25 to be exact) includes a small but very interesting innovation: blocking screenshots of the profile photo. Many may not remember this, but until five years ago it was possible to save your contacts’ profile photo locally. WhatsApp disabled this option a long time ago, but it was still possible to take screenshots.

Notification shown by WhatsApp (beta) when we try to take a screenshot of another user’s profile photo | Image: WaBetaInfo

No catch. Although it is true that this feature is still in the testing phase and therefore not available for general use, we can see how it works thanks to WaBetaInfo. When trying to take a screenshot the device will tell us that this is not possible. You can see the notification displayed by the application in the picture above these lines. This will prevent anyone from taking our photo, but unfortunately there are still ways to get around this limitation. For example, taking a photo of the screen with another mobile phone would be sufficient, but at least it adds some friction to the process.

WhatsApp scams. And such measures are becoming increasingly important. In recent months, all kinds of scams have proliferated on WhatsApp, from people pretending to be close to us asking for money, to users offering us quick money in exchange for doing something simple… in a more specific configuration, these people not only write to us, but also have They can also see our photo with all the potential meanings.

So, configuration. Since we cannot prevent someone we do not know from writing to us on WhatsApp for now, the simplest solution is to change WhatsApp privacy settings to limit who can see our profile photo. To do this, simply do the following:

WhatsApp > Settings > Privacy > Profile photo.

From here we can select various settings: “everyone”, “my contacts”, “except my contacts…” and “nobody”. Simply change it from “everyone” to “my contacts”. In this way, only the people we have saved in our contact list will be able to see our profile photo. This won’t stop a potential scammer from writing to us, but it will at least stop them from seeing our profile photo.

Pictures | Torsten Dettlaf, WaBetaInfo

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