The feature which, if turned on, will disappear the messages in the chat after 7 days was being tested for the past few months by WhatsApp and has now been finally released. The feature is launched specially to make chats safer and more private. Sometimes people forget to delete their not-so-safe messages, which can lead them to unwanted trouble; however, if one has enabled the option for "disappearing messages" for a particular chat, they will vanish even if the user forgets to delete.
In a private one-to-one conversation, either of the two participants can enable the settings, whereas, in a group conversation, only the admins will have control over it. The company believes that this will save chats' intimacy and help those users who had to go all the way back to turn off the reminders that kept on annoying them.
There are, however, some conditions that every WhatsApp user should know;
- If the WhatsApp application isn't opened by the user for seven days, and the feature is enabled in the settings, the messages will disappear. The message can still be previewed in the notification bar until the app is opened.
- If someone with the disappearing messages setting turned on forwards a message to a chat with the disappearing message off, the text will still be displayed after seven days in the forwarded chat.
- The reply to a disappearing message will still be shown in the quoted text even after seven days.
- Disappearing messages will be stored in the backup if done prior to the disappearance; however, it will be deleted permanently when the backup is restored.
All of the above provisos tell us that "disappearing messages" are not likely to disappear completely, which seems pretty problematic. The company notes that the users can take a screenshot or forward particular messages that they want to keep from chats they doubt and can use them in the future. With people being more and more concerned about their cybersecurity issues, saving the messages in the form of screenshots makes a lot of sense.
Let us all wait and see how do users rate and review this new update of WhatsApp.
