WhatsApp allows you to modify the privacy settings of the Groups, so that users decide the scope of who can include them in new chats, but an alleged update of the service has generated controversy for having ensured that the company has changed the settings and pre-established the option to ‘Everyone’.
Since last week it has been shared on social networks such as Facebook that WhatsApp has distributed an update with which it has changed the settings of User Groups. Specifically, and as reported by Forbes, the viral message draws attention to the privacy risks posed by this change and even indicates the steps to modify the settings.
The viral message is as follows: “WhatsApp has changed your group settings to include ‘everyone’ by default, so that people you don’t know can add you to a group without you knowing. These people can include fraudulent messages , loan takers, etc. You can change your default settings as follows: 1. Go to WhatsApp: 2. Go to Settings 3. Go to Account 4. Go to Privacy 5. Go to Groups 6. Change from (All) to (My contacts). This is true. I checked mine and all settings were changed for everyone instead of my contacts. “
This message can alert those people that when they go to confirm if it is true, they see that in fact their configuration for the groups indicates ‘All’. It is, however, the default option for these mass chats since the update that WhatsApp introduced and notified in 2019, and it is not linked to the latest update of the service’s policies.
That is, if the user who goes to his configuration alarmed has not made any change in it in the last two years, he will see the option ‘all’, but not because WhatsApp has changed it now with a new update, but because he did. two years ago. There will also be users who have directly wanted to leave this option.
A WhatsApp spokesperson has confirmed to Europa Press that the service allows anyone who has a user’s phone number to send them a message or add them to a group, just as anyone can send an SMS or email if they have the information. contact. And he clarifies that in 2019 they added “new controls” for people who wanted to put limits on who could add them to the groups.
WhatsApp, in addition to allowing you to change the configuration of groups, has tools that allow you to block and report other users, and notifies the user of the settings each time a person who is not registered as a contact adds him to a group.
