Remember when we told you that WhatsApp was going to include the ability to prevent people from adding you to a group chat without your permission ? Well, that feature is now starting to roll out. Let's review how it works and everything we know about this useful feature.
Prevent being added to a group on WhatsApp
In mid-February, the news broke: WhatsApp would be adding a feature to prevent people from adding you to group chats without your permission. However, at the time, the arrival of this feature on our phones was completely uncertain, with no confirmed release date. That changes starting today.
The folks at The Next Web have reported that this option is already starting to reach some users (it seems through the app's beta program, although, in our case, we haven't seen it activated yet despite being signed up), so it will be a matter of "a few weeks" before it starts to be available worldwide for everyone who has WhatsApp installed on their smartphone.
Remember that this option will give you the ability to decide whether you want to continue being added to group chats without your prior permission. Until now, if someone wanted to add you to a WhatsApp group chat, they only needed your phone number, and in just a couple of taps, you'd unexpectedly appear in the chat without any prior warning.
You'll soon be able to go to the app's Settings , where you'll have the option to change this. Just go to the Groups section (within Privacy ) and choose from the three available options when someone adds you to a group chat:
- All (“Everyone” in the screenshots you see in this article): Anyone can add you to a chat group. Nothing would change from how WhatsApp is currently configured.
- Contacts (“My contacts”): only the people you have in your contact list will be able to add you directly to a WhatsApp group. Any other person with your number who is not on your list must send you a previous invitation -*central image of the screenshots that you have a little higher- that you can reject or not -image on the right.
- Anyone ("Nobody"): No one will be able to add you to a group without your specific prior consent. The person interested in adding you (whether or not they are on your contact list) will see a message that they cannot add you and that they must send you an invitation first. After that, you will have the possibility to accept to enter the group or cancel it.
You might not think it's a big deal to be added to a group without permission, but in some markets, this practice is getting out of hand . TNW reports that in countries like India, where WhatsApp also has a large user base, it's quite common for strangers to add you to groups without asking for advertising or propaganda purposes . In fact, national elections are coming up soon, and this is one of the ways political parties use to promote their campaign platforms. Can you imagine if here in Spain, just two weeks before the elections, people started adding you to WhatsApp groups for the PSOE, PP, Vox, or Podemos parties without any control? It would be crazy.
WhatsApp urgently needed to solve this and it seems that it is finally going to remedy it.
*We will update the captures with our own images as soon as the function is activated on our phones.