Ahtisham Ali
Whatsapp is very strict and keen about its security and privacy features and protects WhatsApp account of users but as We all know online scams and frauds are increasing day by day as we mentioned in our blog people are getting scammed and losing a lot of money to these scams. But apart from these direct scams, another risk that has increased with the passage of time and progress in technology is that social accounts are being hacked and no one is secure online in these times.
Different platforms have introduced different methods for securing and protecting their users for example google has introduced different authentication methods and different ways to protect its users from these hacking and security issues.
All of us are sharing a lot of information on Whatsapp and WhatsApp has become a part of our daily routines and we can’t ignore it or live without it as it has become vital for our communication.
So it is necessary to keep Whatsapp secure and keep it safe by doing all the necessary measures because it has become our major means of communication.
For this purpose, we can take different security precautions to stay safe and private on WhatsApp below we are going to mention some of these precautionary measures
#1 Set Privacy Settings for Profile on Whatsapp
Privacy settings are the first step to take while on WhatsApp as they will help you stay safe from strangers and stalkers on WhatsApp. To be anonymous to stalkers and strangers on WhatsApp do remember to set the privacy setting to at least on "My Contacts". It's not a good practice nor a good way to keep your profile picture public as it will give out your information to the stalkers.
Don't post important or profile information on your about.
A better approach is to hide your last seen so a stalker can't see you or mark your activities.
We also have a detailed guide on these privacy settings
#2 Set Privacy Setting For Groups on Whatsapp
This has been the most important privacy setting introduced by WhatsApp for its users as it was a necessary step. It has three options
Everyone
My Contacts
Everyone Except
From all of the above, the best option is Everyone Except. After this people excluded from the list of contacts can't add you to any group without your consent. Whenever anyone tries to add you to a group a link will be shared with you that you can use to add join a group if you want so otherwise you can ignore the link.
This setting is so important because any stranger or new contact with whom you are not so aware of can add you to a bad group that is prohibited by WhatsApp servers and hence result in getting you banned temporarily or for a lifetime.
The best practice is to exclude all contacts because who knows someone can hack or steal your friends/contact WhatsApp account and add you to a malicious group and get you banned from WhatsApp.
#3 Sent Messages Can Be Revoked But Is it safe..
What's happening is people are sending confidential messages or images and thinking that they can be revoked easily hence removing the records of that message by doing DELETE FOR EVERYONE but is it really that easy...
Because People can save or they can forward these messages before they are revoked hence keeping a copy of these messages.
So thinking that you can send an item and then delete it and there will be no record of it is a wrong thought because now you might think otherwise...
The suggestion is to always pay attention and keep in concern what you are sharing on WhatsApp...
#4 Sent Messages Can Be Revoked But Is it safe..
What's happening is people are sending confidential messages or images and thinking that they can be revoked easily hence removing the records of that message by doing DELETE FOR EVERYONE but is it really that easy...
Because People can save or they can forward these messages before they are revoked hence keeping a copy of these messages.
So thinking that you can send an item and then delete it and there will be no record of it is a wrong thought because now you might think otherwise...
The suggestion is to always pay attention and keep in concern what you are sharing on WhatsApp...
#5 Enable Your Bio-metric Authentication to Lock Whatsapp
All of us have private chats on WhatsApp that we wouldn't like someone to see or someone to go through them.
Nowadays cell phones with biometric features are common in use and are in trends, so following the trend, WhatsApp introduced biometric login for the security of its user. Due to this, no unauthorized person can open WhatsApp.
If your device supports biometric authentication, then this feature of biometric authorization can be enabled following the below-mentioned steps:
Tap on the Three Dots on the top right.
From the dropdown menu go to the Settings option.
From the next screen go to the Accounts option.
From there go to the Privacy option.
At the bottom of the screen select Fingerprint Lock.
#6 Enable Two Step Verification in Whatsapp
Above we talked about biometric authentication but wait a minute biometric verification has limitations to it.
Consider this scenario what if the attacker/scammer didn't get access to your phone for long enough and instead he swapped sims or somehow hacked your sim... Now he can do anything because he has your registered SIM, he can use this number to scam people or do a malicious activity with your account who knows...
So to keep yourself protected and safe from this scenario the best approach is to enable two-step verification what that does is enable another security layer before giving access to your WhatsApp account.
When two-step verification is enabled whenever you change your device or change in SIM state occurs and you log into WhatsApp it shares a 6-digit code via SMS or Registered Mail. And after confirming the code it then lets you log in.
But what is the right method to follow...
No, Because the attacker has access to your SIM sending a 6-digit code to that number won't be of any good. If he has the SIM that means he can easily access your Gmail meaning that he can still get the 6-digit code. So it's not so beneficial once you lose the SIM.
The question is how should Two Factor be enabled so that there is no way to breach it...
What we will suggest is to not use your mobile number or Gmail id with two-step verification instead use some third party token authentication code generator apps, there are multiply available on market for example:
Google Authenticator.
1Password.
Authy.
Each one has its perks we will cover that up so stay tuned for more...
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