How To Protect Your Whatsapp From Hacking? Steps To Prevent Your Whatsapp From Hacking
by P Nandhini | Updated Jan 27, 2023
The American business Meta Platforms is the owner of WhatsApp, a voice-over-IP and centralised instant messaging service that is freely accessible worldwide and cross-platform. Users can exchange photographs, documents, user locations, voice and video chats, text and voice messages, and other types of content. Mobile devices and desktops can both access the client application for WhatsApp. In order to sign up for the service, you need a mobile phone number. A standalone business app named WhatsApp Business was released in January 2018 and can communicate with the main WhatsApp client.
How To Protect Your Whatsapp From Hacking?
The WhatsApp messaging service from Facebook is very simple to set up, but if you're not careful, its ease leaves your account open to abuse. Fortunately, adding an additional layer of security to your account is extremely straightforward, so even if your six-digit activation code is stolen, you won't lose access to it.
Unfortunately, using these security measures won't shield you from a significant hack like the one that targeted Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. If someone is able to lure you into disclosing your security code—a technique known as "social hacking"—it will serve as an additional layer of security. Here are some precautions you should take to prevent WhatsApp attacks from hackers.
How To Prevent Your Whatsapp From Hacking?
Enable Two-Step Verification
The most important setting that users must activate on their WhatsApp account in order to safeguard their account from hackers is this one. When you receive your SMS verification code, you can use the setting to set a six-digit PIN on your account, which will be required to unlock your account. If a hacker is unable to obtain your SMS code, they will not be able to access your account even if they do have it.
Step 1) Select Account from the menu under WhatsApp Settings, then select Two-Step verification.
Step 2) Once the setting is active, enter a PIN. To make sure you entered the PIN correctly, you must do it again.
Step 3) Even though WhatsApp has remembered your PIN at this point, it will occasionally ask you to enter it again simply to make sure you don't forget it and lock yourself out of your account.
Double Check Your Privacy Settings
Even though these settings aren't directly tied to hackers taking over your account, they can give attackers a very excellent sense of who you are and who you interact with, which can be used to target you for social engineering. You should adjust your privacy settings to keep your personal information away from hackers and other dishonest people in order to avoid this from happening.
Step 1) Go to WhatsApp Settings, select Account, and then select Privacy.
Step 2) Check the Last Seen, About, Profile Photo, and Status settings now. To ensure that nobody you do not know may see this information, make sure that all of these are set to "My contacts."
Step 3) Be sure to report any messages to WhatsApp using the in-chat menu that come from unknown senders seeking for personal information.
Tweak Those Privacy Settings
WhatsApp offers users a variety of privacy settings. Users of the messaging service have the opportunity to decide with whom they wish to share their profile picture, status, and other information. The Setting should be changed to "Contacts only." This indicates that your profile photo, status, phone number, and auto-delete status will only be visible to phone numbers that are saved on your smartphone.
Deactivate Whatsapp When Phone Is Stolen, Lost
Phone theft is a pretty frequent occurrence. Deactivate your WhatsApp account in this situation to prevent someone else from hacking it and gaining access to all of your personal information. Go to Settings, select "Delete my account," enter your phone number, and then click "Delete my account" to delete your WhatsApp account.
End-To-End Encryption
Every WhatsApp user should make sure that their conversations are fully secured. Open the conversation, tap the contact's name to access the contact information screen, and then tap Encryption to display the QR code and 60-digit number to confirm that the chat is end-to-end encrypted. With end-to-end encryption, WhatsApp makes sure that no third party, not even WhatsApp, can read the communications you and your contact are exchanging.
Don’t Click On Any Suspicious Link
Do your WhatsApp contacts frequently send you messages with arbitrary links? So you shouldn't ever click on links that seem suspicious. In fact, it's a good idea to read the sent link from your contact first before clicking on it. According to some rumors, WhatsApp is developing a "suspect link" function that will make it simple for users to determine whether a given link is legitimate or not.
Remember To Log Out Of Whatsapp Web
We frequently have a habit of opening our WhatsApp Web accounts at work and leaving them there. This behavior may end up causing you issues. All of your chats can be accessed by someone else using the same PC without your knowledge. Logging out of WhatsApp Web before leaving the office is a smart idea. To log in again, it only takes a few seconds. You only need to scan the code to finish.
Lock Whatsapp Screen
Test out the Android version of WhatsApp's lock screen feature. By doing this, you'll make sure that only you can access your WhatsApp account. Simply select the Screen Lock option under Privacy in the Settings menu. After that, you must register your fingerprint. You will need to scan your fingerprint each time you launch the WhatsApp app when the process is finished. This increases security by another level.
Features Of Whatsapp
Send a single message to multiple people at once
It is possible to simultaneously broadcast a single message to numerous recipients. Simply pick "New broadcast" from the menu by clicking on the three-dot ellipse. By including the contacts in the recipient list, you will have the option to send the same message to many recipients. Select the names from your contact list by clicking the plus symbol (+) on the right.
Format your text
Now, you may send messages that are bold, italicised, or strikethrough. To acquire the formatting you want, just use the special characters before and after the words. Use an asterisk to make something bold (*hello*), an underscore to make italics (_hello_), and a tilde to make something strikethrough (hello).
Find out who you chat with a lot
Simply scrolling through the conversation screen will reveal whom you are conversing with excessively on WhatsApp. However, it will be challenging to quickly determine if you have deleted the messages or if there are too many. To do this, go to settings and select "Settings," "Account," and "Storage Usage." If you tap anyone on this list of people you are now speaking with, you can learn how much data you have sent or received overall. You can probably now determine who your best friend is. Currently, this feature is only accessible on the iPhone.
Save data when using WhatsApp on Mobile networks
Selecting what you wish to automatically download allows you to limit your data usage if you're abroad or using a slow or expensive broadband network. When you are roaming, you can decide which videos, photos, or audio to download. To lessen the amount of data consumed during a WhatsApp call, you can also select "Low data consumption."
Add dates to your calendar
Only the iPhone is currently compatible with this. You will be able to see a date that your contact sends you in the chat underlined in blue. You may create an event and add the dates to your calendar by just holding down on the date.
How To Protect Your Whatsapp From Hacking: FAQs
WhatsApp uses end-to-end encryption technology to ensure secure and private chats or messages. That means that only you and the person you're talking to can read what's being said, and no one in between can access your messages.
Please note, WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted and messages are stored on your device, so someone accessing your account on another device can't read your past conversations.
Open WhatsApp, tap More options > Settings. Tap Privacy > Blocked contacts. Tap Add . Search for or select the contact you want to block.
When you receive this notification, it means that someone has entered your phone number and requested the registration code. This often happens if another user mistyped your number when trying to enter their own number to register, and can also happen when someone attempts to take over your account.
Go to the Google Play Store, then search for WhatsApp Messenger. Tap INSTALL. Open WhatsApp and continue to the next screen by agreeing to our Terms of Service. Register your phone number.
You can download WhatsApp to your smartphone. If you have an iPhone, then you'll need to use the App Store, and if you have an Android phone or tablet then it's the Play Store. It doesn't cost anything to download WhatsApp.