WhatsApp has launched an additional layer of privateness referred to as Superior Chat Privateness that permits customers to dam individuals from sharing the contents of a dialog in conventional chats and teams.
“This new setting obtainable in each chats and teams helps forestall others from taking content material exterior of WhatsApp for when you might have considered trying additional privateness,” WhatsApp stated in a press release.
The elective characteristic, when enabled, prevents others from exporting chats, auto-downloading media to their cellphone, and utilizing messages for synthetic intelligence (AI) options. Nevertheless, it is value noting customers can nonetheless take particular person screenshots, or manually obtain the media.
The favored messaging service stated the characteristic is “finest used” when partaking in delicate conversations with teams the place it is potential that customers might not know everybody intently.
The characteristic, WhatsApp stated, is rolling to all customers who’re on the newest model of the appliance.
The disclosure comes because the European Fee fined Meta €200 million ($227 million) for breaching the Digital Markets Act (DMA) by illegally requiring customers to go for a “pay or consent” mannequin and never providing a much less customized however equal various for many who don’t consent.
“This mannequin isn’t compliant with the DMA, because it didn’t give customers the required particular option to go for a service that makes use of much less of their private information however is in any other case equal to the ‘personalised adverts’ service,” the Fee stated.
“Meta’s mannequin additionally didn’t permit customers to train their proper to freely consent to the mixture of their private information.”
The E.U. watchdog stated it is at present assessing a brand new model of the free customized adverts mannequin that Meta launched in November 2024 and which “allegedly makes use of much less private information to show ads.”
It is value noting that the €200 million high-quality is just for the interval between March 2024, when the DMA took impact, and November 2024, that means the corporate might face further penalties if its new system can also be discovered to be non-compliant.
Meta has responded to the fines by stating that the Fee is “trying to handicap profitable American companies whereas permitting Chinese language and European corporations to function underneath totally different requirements.”
“And by unfairly limiting customized promoting the European Fee can also be hurting European companies and economies,” Joel Kaplan, Chief International Affairs Officer at Meta, stated.