WhatsApp previously let us password-protect certain chats. But to avoid arousing suspicion, you can now also hide these chats. — Photo: Zacharie Scheurer/dpa
BERLIN: WhatsApp has been letting us create password-protected chats for a few months now, to make sure certain conversations are safe from being accessed, even if someone else unlocks your phone.
And yet the very presence of a locked chat that can only be opened with a fingerprint, face scan, PIN or pattern can arouse suspicions if someone else sees it. For this reason, the Meta-owned chat app is letting you hide the fact that you have locked coversations.
"Today we’re launching secret code, an additional way to protect those chats and make them harder to find if someone has access to your phone or you share a phone with someone else," WhatsApp announced at the end of November.
To hide your locked chats from your chat list, you'll need to set a new password - one that isn't the same as your device's screen lock.
Only someone who knows this specific password (Whatsapp calls it a "secret code") and enters it into the Whatsapp search bar will be able to see the locked chat.
When it introduced the chat lock in May, Whatsapp said this features was meant for "people who have reason to share their phones from time to time with a family member or those."
The developers said it was also for "moments where someone else is holding your phone at the exact moment an extra special chat arrives."
The roll-out of the secret code feature has already begun, but it will only be available worldwide "in the coming months," WhatsApp says. – dpa
