WhatsApp Enables Web Users to Send Self-Destructing Messages

WhatsApp is always into something new; to see it, it’s enough to track Android Beta versions. But now, one of the new features comes to the web version as well. WhatsApp Web users will be able to send and receive self-destructing messages that can only be read once for a certain limited time.

The new feature (which is only new for WhatsApp, while familiar for those on Snapchat) is called View Once. It appears as you try to send a picture or a video as a round icon with a “1” in it. If you click or tap it, it turns green which means that the media will be sent in a View Once mode and deleted automatically after being seen. So, if you received such an attachment, don’t close it hastily: you may have no other chance to see it.
This feature is quite in line with all these security and privacy concerns so much spoken about today. No wonder that WhatsApp that functioned well without it for all these years started implementing it in 2021. If you think the photos and videos you send are too sensible, make sure you 

What WhatsApp View Once lacks, though, both in the app and in the web version, is a screenshot alert. It makes sense to send sensible pictures and texts if you are sure that the recipient will not save them and use them later (maybe against you). If they do, the sender is usually alerted about that. But not in WhatsApp View Once. The app does nothing to prevent screenshots, instead simply warning you about this risk as you send the View Once message. On the other hand, given how many users now have two or more devices, there is no protection from simply taking a photo of the screen with another device. So the screenshot alert is rather an illusion of privacy. Maybe WhatsApp has its reasons to skip this feature.

The update will roll out gradually, so not all WhatsApp Beta users now have it. Neither does it cover all the web users so far. Maybe, though, View Once will soon make it to the iOS and stable Android versions.