{"id":111275,"date":"2025-09-03T10:27:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-03T10:27:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/111275\/"},"modified":"2025-09-03T10:27:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T10:27:12","slug":"what-whatsapps-advanced-chat-privacy-really-does","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/111275\/","title":{"rendered":"What WhatsApp\u2019s \u201cAdvanced Chat Privacy\u201d Really Does"},"content":{"rendered":"

In April, WhatsApp launched its \u201cAdvanced Chat Privacy<\/a>\u201d feature, which, once enabled, disables using certain AI features in chats and prevents conversations from being exported. Since its launch, an inaccurate viral post has been ping-ponging around social networks<\/a>, creating confusion around what exactly it does. <\/p>\n

The viral post falsely claims that if you do not enable Advanced Chat Privacy, Meta\u2019s AI tools will be able to access your private conversations. This isn\u2019t true, and it misrepresents both how Meta AI works and what Advanced Chat Privacy is.<\/p>\n

The confusion seems to spawn from the fact that Meta AI can be invoked through a number of methods, including in any group chat with the @Meta AI command<\/a>. While the chat contents between you and other people are always end-to-end encrypted on the app, what you say to Meta AI is not<\/a>. Similarly, if you or anyone else in the chat chooses to use Meta AI’s \u201cSummarize<\/a>\u201d feature, which uses Meta\u2019s \u201cPrivate Processing<\/a>\u201d technology, that feature routes the text of the chat through Meta\u2019s servers. However, the company claims that they cannot view the content of those messages. This feature remains opt-in, so it’s up to you to decide if you want to use it. The company also recently released the results of two audits<\/a> detailing the issues that have been found thus far and what they\u2019ve done to fix it.<\/p>\n

For example, if you and your buddy are chatting, and your friend types in @Meta AI and asks it a question, that part of the conversion, which you can both see, is not end-to-end encrypted, and is usable for AI training or whatever other purposes are included in Meta\u2019s privacy policy<\/a>. But otherwise, chats remain end-to-end encrypted.<\/p>\n

Advanced Chat Privacy offers some bit of control over this. The new privacy feature isn\u2019t a universal setting in WhatsApp; you can enable or disable it on a per-chat basis, but it\u2019s turned off by default. When enabled, Advanced Chat Privacy does three core things:<\/p>\n

Blocks anyone in the chat from exporting the chats,
\nDisables auto-downloading media to chat participant\u2019s phones, and
\nDisables some Meta AI features<\/p>\n

Outside disabling some Meta AI features, Advanced Chat Privacy can be useful in other instances. For example, while someone can always screenshot chats, if you\u2019re concerned about someone easily exporting an entire group chat history, Advanced Chat Privacy makes this harder to do because there\u2019s no longer a one-tap option to do so. And since media can\u2019t be automatically downloaded to someone\u2019s phone (the \u201cSave to Photos\u201d option on the chat settings screen), it\u2019s harder for an attachment to accidentally end up on someone\u2019s device. <\/p>\n

How to Enable Advanced Chat Privacy<\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/p>\n

Advanced Chat Privacy is enabled or disabled per chat. To enable it:<\/p>\n

Tap the chat name at the top of the screen.
\nSelect Advanced chat privacy, then tap the toggle to turn it on.<\/p>\n

There are some quirks to how this works, though. For one, by default, anyone involved in a chat can turn Advanced Chat Privacy on or off at will, which limits its usefulness but at least helps ensure something doesn\u2019t accidentally get sent to Meta AI. <\/p>\n

\"whatsapp<\/p>\n

There\u2019s one way around this, which is for a group admin to lock down what users in the group can do. In an existing group chat that you are the administrator of, tap the chat name at the top of the screen, then:<\/p>\n

Scroll down to Group Permissions.
\nDisable the option to \u201cEdit Group Settings.\u201d This makes it so only the administrator can change several important permissions, including Advanced Chat Privacy.<\/p>\n

You can also set this permission when starting a new group chat. Just be sure to pop into the permissions page when prompted. Even without Advanced Chat Privacy, the \u201cEdit Group Settings\u201d option is an important one for privacy, because it also includes whether participants can change the length that disappearing messages can be viewed, so it\u2019s something worth considering for every group chat you\u2019re an administrator of, and something WhatsApp should require admins to choose before starting a new chat.<\/p>\n

When it comes to one-on-one chats, there is currently no way to block the other person from changing the Advanced Chat Privacy feature, so you\u2019ll have to come to an agreement with the other person on keeping it enabled if that\u2019s what you want. If the setting is changed, you\u2019ll see a notice in the chat stating so:<\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/p>\n

There are already serious concerns with how much metadata WhatsApp collects<\/a>, and as the company introduces ads<\/a> and AI<\/a>, it\u2019s going to get harder and harder to navigate the app, understand what each setting does, and properly protect the privacy of conversations. One of the reasons alternative encrypted chat options like Signal tend to thrive is because they keep things simple and employ strong default settings and clear permissions. WhatsApp should keep this in mind as it adds more and more features.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In April, WhatsApp launched its \u201cAdvanced Chat Privacy\u201d feature, which, once enabled, disables using certain AI features in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":111276,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-111275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111275\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}