Once Snapchat’s selling feature, Disappearing messages are becoming more prevalent on most major messaging platforms that want to advertise their security and privacy features. Of course, each platform naturally gives its spin, mainly how long they permit messages to remain alive. WhatsApp, for instance, is giving users more options to stay messages around as long as they need, even going as far as three months tops.
Disappearing messages are part privacy measure and part housekeeping tool. They lessen the danger of personal messages and media being read by unauthorized people, especially after the phone has been stolen. It also reduces the quantity of space that an app takes abreast of the device by automatically deleting old messages after a given period.
Unlike Snapchat’s default behavior, WhatsApp introduced its disappearing messages feature last year with one seven days. A couple of months ago, it finally added a 24-hour option for the fastest period. Now it’s extending the set of options by adding a 90-day option, a minimum of within the app’s beta version for Android.
This, of course, makes the disappearing messages feature more of an automatic cleanup function instead of a privacy feature. WhatsApp’s description says that recipients of these messages can save them through other means anyway. So it’s not a foolproof privacy guard, especially if messages are deleted only after three months.
Despite its associations with Facebook, WhatsApp is undoubtedly trying to intensify its game in painting itself as a champion of security and privacy. Earlier this month, it introduced a “View Once” feature for photos and videos that automatically delete the media after it’s been seen; no timer is necessary. However, this 90-day interval for disappearing messages won’t arrive immediately because it takes WhatsApp a couple of months to require a beta feature and add it into a stable release.
