WhatsApp set to roll out new privacy feature for disappearing chats, but why it may really not work – Times of India

NEW DELHI: WhatsApp is rolling out a new update to its disappearing messages feature. The update seems to be aimed at fixing one big problem with the feature – auto-saving of media. According to a report in WABeta, WhatsApp users soon will not be able to automatically save media files from disappearing chats.
Disappearing chats are designed specifically for messages that are set to disappear after a certain time to protect users’ privacy. However, so far users could autosave the media shared in these messages. This means that users could auto-save media from disappearing chats in their phone’s camera roll. However, WhatsApp has now restricted the download of disappearing media to make them more secure and private. The changes will be rolled out to WhatsApp users on both Apple iOS and Android in the coming days.
WhatsApp on Android will automatically disable the ‘Media Visibility’ option for disappearing chats. While on iOS, the feature ‘Save to Camera Roll’ will be deactivated. This will restrict the recipients from automatically saving any images, videos or GIFs to their phone’s gallery from disappearing chats. These auto-options will be turned off by default for disappearing chats.
But while the update solves the auto-save issue, it may not save the problem entirely. As users will still be able to save media manually in disappearing chats by going and enabling the mode. Some users on certain versions of Android already have an option to manually save media. On WhatsApp for iOS, users can save media the way they do. This means that while the media in disappearing chats will not be autosaved, it can still be saved.