In India Whatsapp is used more frequently than any other messaging platform. We use Whatsapp from morning to night to convey our needs, wants and general forwards and gossip! 🙂 Compared to other messaging platforms, when you use Whatsapp with default settings, you can see when the receiver has seen the message. This will be marked by “blue tick” when the receiver has read the message.
Similarly, when the receiver has seen a sender’s “Whatsapp status”, it will be noticed by the sender of the message. The sender can also see when the receiver has seen the “Whatsapp status”. So, how does one avoid this in Whatsapp?
Users can avoid this by turning “Read receipts off”.
How do we turn “Read Receipts off?”:
- Users can navigate to “Settings’ in Whatsapp
- They can then navigate to ‘Privacy’ label and select that
4. Once inside the ‘Privacy’ label, users can then turn “Read receipts”, “Off”
What happens when the ‘Read Receipts’ are ‘Off’?
When the ‘Read Receipts’ are off:
- The sender cannot see ‘if’ the receiver has seen the message or not
- The sender cannot see ‘when’ the receiver has seen the message(when they see it…)
- The sender cannot see ‘if’ the receiver has seen “Whatsapp status”
- The sender cannot see ‘when’ the receiver has seen “Whatsapp status”(when they see it again…)
- However, if a receiver with ‘Read Receipts off’ reads a message on group chats, it will be visible to the sender of the message
- There is another fun point too – once the receiver with “Read receipts off” likes your message on a sender’s Whatsapp status, it will be interestingly visible to the sender!!(showing that they saw our “Whatsapp” status! :))
Privacy perspective:
Turning ‘Read receipts off’ is supposed to be a privacy oriented feature for individuals. Is it really that way for this particular issue is something I am not sure of… 🙂