WhatsApp kicked off a massive conversation around privacy when it informed its users that it is making some changes to the way it handles user privacy. And ever since the controversy over privacy, the company has been putting a lot of effort to safeguard its user's privacy.
The company now appears to be working on a new feature that will let its users send self-destructing photos. WABetaInfo, a very reliable source of info around the app, has talked about this particular feature in its latest tweet. Here, check it out –
https://twitter.com/WABetaInfo/status/1366928097451327490?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
As you can see, WABetaInfo has also shared a couple of screenshots to showcase the feature in action. It looks like the self-destructing photos cannot be exported from WhatsApp. That is assuming if WhatsApp implements a screenshot detection for these self-destruction photos. We hope they do it because it appears that there is currently no such feature in place, at least according to the source.
Shipping this particular feature without a screenshot detection feature is kind of pointless because anybody can just capture a screenshot to save the image. It completely breaks the purpose, so we guess it is currently in development and is yet to ship with any version of the app.
One of the screenshots shared by WABetaInfo also shows how the self-destructing photos will no longer be available once the user leaves an ongoing chat. There will be a counter on the left side of the text box to show how much time the user has before the photo disappears. We think the same feature will also be baked into the WhatsApp web client.
The self-destructing photos feature is very similar to its self-deleting messages. The messages, however, will only get deleted after a span of 7 days. Until then, the person on the other end can see all the messages, which includes both the texts and the media you have shared. In fact, they can also take screenshots and save them. The media that you upload as WhatsApp Status will expire in 24 hours.
This new feature, as mentioned earlier, is currently in development, and it will be coming to both Android and iOS. It's hard to tell when it will be released widely for all its users as a part of the stable WhatsApp app though.