We all know WhatsApp is among the best instant messaging app used by people all over the world. WhatsApp has recently announced it has 700 million monthly active users sending 30 billion messages a month. These figures are enough to say how much we are addicted to this App and it won’t be wrong if we say WhatsApp is the messaging life line of today’s generation.
Today WhatsApp is providing various features to its users like one to one chat, group chat, image sharing, video sharing, audio sharing, Contact sharing and by using some other apps like WaSend even text files can be shared over whatsApp. In 2015 this messaging platform will also provide video calling features to its ardent users.
Whatsapp is providing all these must use features and we all are using it to the fullest, but behind this one question always arises in many of our mind that, are our personal chat safe??? On WhatsApp many of us share our personal information in the form of text message, images & videos and we don’t want these information to be seen by someone whom we didn’t want to show. Inspite of huge database WhatsApp encrypt all the messages and data. These information has to be kept safely and here are few tips as of how you can secure your WhatsApp database.
1. Lock Your Whatsapp Account
One of the best and evergreen security tip to protect your Whatsapp conversations is to have your WhatsApp locked. WhatsApp itself doesn’t provide this features but third party app can be used to get yourself secured.
2. Block Whatsapp Photos Before It Enters Your Photoroll
It usually happens that your WhatsApp conversation take some personal node and information are shared in the form of images and these images moves to your photoroll. So, next time when you are shoving your friends images of your holiday trip your personal images can scroll down along with your trip images. So here is what you have to do.
If you are an iphone user go to Menu, select ‘Phone settings’ now go to ‘privacy’ option, select ‘photos’ and deselect WhatsApp from the list of apps whose images will be added to the main photostream.
Android users can secure their images using ES File Expolrer App. This App contains WhatsApp images and videos folder. What you have to do is inside these 2 folder create a file and name it ‘nomedia’. This will stop your Operating System from scanning the image & video folder.
3. Hide ‘Last Seen’
Many times it happens that you don’t want people to track your personal schedule. Like you don’t want your friends to see when you were online and sometimes it could be your boss who is keeping an eye on you. So, to be on the safer side select ‘last seen’ option as ‘nobody’.
4. Restrict Access to Your Profile Picture
Previously we have done it for ‘last seen’, similarly we can restrict the access of our profile picture. We can do this by selecting ‘nobody’ option for profile photo or if we want our profile photo to be seen by those who are in our contact then go to ‘privacy’ option in WhatsApp and select ‘profile photo’ option as ‘My Contact’.
There is a need to hide your profile photo because the one whom you have never seen, can chat with you and once you send his a message he will have the access to download your profile photo and as we all know images can be used to accomplish a wrong deal.
5. Beware of Scams
WhatsApp itself doesn’t send any type of message through its app nor through email for any purpose. So, if you are getting any message saying “Click on this link to earn money” or any other message is received by you which claims to offer you something then beware, it’s a Scam.
6. Deactivate Your Whatsapp Account When Needed
Whatsapp provide an important feature to deactivate and activate your account when needed. So, if you have lost your cell phone or it’s been stolen or if your SIM card is blocked by your network provider then activate your WhatsApp account in another cell. Reason behind doing this is a WhatsApp feature which allows access of an account from a single number at a time.
7. Avoid Sharing Your Personal Information
Recently we have read a news about Hacking of “US Department of Defece”. We just have to think once, if such highly secured websites could be hacked then hacking WhatsApp account is not a big deal. So avoid sharing your personal information on WhatsApp as much as you can.
8. Log out of WhatsApp Web
WhatsApp has recently extended its reach to desktop and tablet this has made it easier for users to chat and share data with their friends on a big screen. But behind this user shouldn’t forget to log out of WhatsApp web once he is over with the work. This has to be done because you won’t feel good if you move to take a cup of coffee and if some of you friend access your personal WhatsApp account.
Finally, we can only say WhatsApp is the best messaging platform but it is not so much secured that you are free to share your personal information over this app. Safety is what we have to look in this world of Technology.
