In a move that determines the fate of user messages on WhatsApp, the messaging app belonging to Meta has announced plans to launch a new feature allowing users to delete chat messages after a duration they specify themselves. According to a social media expert in an interview with Sky News Arabia, this new service will likely result in increased reliance on email for long-term storage of documents and important papers, restricting WhatsApp to short-term messaging.
If users enable the new privacy feature through a set of options that allow messages to disappear after 24 hours, 7 days, or 90 days post-sending, the old messages will automatically vanish. Social media expert Mohammad Al-Harithi describes this option as wonderful and significant, noting it is optional and will not affect messages previously sent or received by the user in chat.
He adds that this feature, which includes texts, images, and videos, aims to protect user message privacy by destroying messages they do not want to keep for longer periods. Users simply need to enable the disappearing message feature for their sent messages to vanish from both their phones and the recipient's device.
Warning about Security
However, the expert warns against placing complete trust in this feature. Al-Harithi explains, “The automatic disappearance of messages from WhatsApp chats does not mean they are deleted from the app's servers, which retain a vast amount of data, the fate of which users are unaware of but is governed by international standards and regulations.”
Regarding the activation of this feature, it does not matter if the user has an iPhone or an Android; the steps are the same for both devices. Users just need to open the WhatsApp app, navigate to settings by clicking the three vertical dots at the top left of the screen, tap on Account, go to Privacy, and they will find the default messages timer at the bottom of the privacy page. Finally, they can specify the duration after which they would like the messages to disappear.
But privacy isn't the only advantage offered by this new feature, the social media expert continues, as it “also helps keep the phone’s memory clean and free from stored copies of conversations and media.” He believes this feature will change the culture of some users who consider WhatsApp a means for data storage.
Al-Harithi concludes that the new feature will limit WhatsApp's role to instant messaging, with document and important paper exchanges taking place via email, as it offers greater digital security.
