Keeping 2022 private: WhatsApp, Signal roll out new privacy features; here’s all you need to know

Messaging applications are unveiling a slew of features to render a comfortable experience to users. Starting from WhatsApp's 'My Contacts Except' to Signal increasing its video group call limit, users have an array of features to look forward to.

WhatsApp is all set to roll out its latest feature 'My Contacts Except'. The new update for the desktop version will enable users to hide their ‘last seen’ and profile pictures from a set of selected contacts. The feature is the latest among updates by WhatsApp to enhance privacy features for users.

According to a blog post by wabetainfo, now one can select who all can view the user’s information such as About, Profile Photo, and Last Seen. According to the report, the feature will be released on both the app and desktop versions. The messaging platform will soon include the feature on iOS beta and Android beta, however, the official date of the release is yet to be known.


On similar lines, another prominent messaging-application platform Signal extended the limit of participants in a group-video call.

"Signal released end-to-end encrypted group calls a year ago, and since then we’ve scaled from support for 5 participants all the way to 40. There is no off the shelf software that would allow us to support calls of that size while ensuring that all communication is end-to-end encrypted, so we built our own open-source Signal Calling Service to do the job," said the company in its official blog.
Video and audio are usually transferred via three kinds of architecture - Selective Forwarding, Full Mesh, and Server Mixing. While Server Mixing that supports a large number of participants is not end-to-end encrypted, on the other hand, Full Mesh only operates on smaller calls.

Signal was able to secure the media flow of a large number of participants through its open-source unit - Selective Forwarding Unit. According to the company, participants send their media to the server and the server 'forwards' it to the recipients without altering or viewing it. The new feature is compatible with end-to-end encryption, according to the company's post.