WhatsApp Prevents Auto-Saving Media for Disappearing Chats

What’s the reason for disappearing messages to exist? In such messages, you can share view-once media and be sure that they won’t leak out. But if the recipient has turned on automatic saving of media, they can still keep it in their gallery. WhatsApp finally decides to fix this vulnerability.

The new feature was (as it usually happens) spotted by WABetaInfo, a website specializing in analyzing beta versions of WhatsApp and tracking new features that appear in these betas or will evidently appear in the next updates. Reverse-engineering these betas often lets the app explorers find potential new features that often appear in following updates.

As for this particular feature, first it was spotted in Meta’s plans in February. Now, as WABetaInfo said on April 8, the feature is rolling out on both beta and release versions on Android and iOS. The release will be global but spread gradually as usual. If you haven’t received the update yet, soon you will.

The users will still be able to save the media from view-once messages manually: on iOS it is done in the usual way, on Android it has yet to be enabled for many users. If the recipient takes a screenshot or records video, WhatsApp will not notify the sender. So, the safety of view-once messages is still far from perfect. On the other hand, no one can prevent the recipient from taking a photo of the message from the screen with another device. So you must acknowledge that no technology of self-destructing messages will keep your communication absolutely confidential.

Anyway, when the update arrives, you will receive a message informing you about automatic media download being disabled for disappearing messages. Have you already received it? Do you consider it useful, or are you skeptical about these steps as half-measures? Let us know what you think in the comments!