In recent news, WABetaInfo has leaked the upcoming ‘disappearing mode’ feature for iOS. This feature is said to enhance user privacy by automatically deleting the messages after a certain period of time. According to the site:
“Today we’re announcing the feature called Disappearing Mode!
If you love privacy, disappearing messages is the feature for you. You can enable it within Contact Info and Group Info, but it can happen that you have to manually enable it when a contact starts a new chat with you.”
When the user enables this mode all new chats will begin with disappearing messages on and will the messages will slowly disappear as if you had deleted the messages. Once this feature is available, iPhone and iPad users can head over to the WhatsApp app, then tap on settings, privacy and then toggle on the disappearing mode function. As shown below:
Moreover, in regards to the controversial privacy policy WhatsApp will not be deactivating accounts as mentioned in a following statement by WhatsApp.
“While the majority of users who have received the new terms of service have accepted them, we appreciate some people haven’t had the chance to do so yet. No accounts will be deleted on May 15 because of this update and no one will lose the functionality of WhatsApp either. We will follow up with reminders to people over the next several weeks.”
However, users will eventually lose some of the platform features if they do not accept the terms. This includes the ability to access chat list, audio and video calls and no new notifications.