Here’s how you can control who can see your profile picture, online status, and last seen

• WhatsApp has rolled out new options to your privacy control settings.
• The new privacy feature lets you hide your profile photo and online status from specific users.
• Here’s how you can use new privacy settings.

Meta-owned messaging platform WhatsApp has updated its privacy control settings, giving users more control over info, profile picture and last seen status.


Previously, users only had the option to hide the above-mentioned settings for contacts or nobody. With this new privacy update, WhatsApp users gain more control letting them hide profile pictures, online status, and last seen with specific users via a new option - ‘My Contacts Except.’ With this contacts can see your profile photo, last seen or status, except the people you exclude.

Also read:

How to use new privacy features
WhatsApp's new privacy features are not as extensive as Telegram which already supports hiding last seen, profile photos on a per-contact basis. But this appears to be a convenient feature for people who tend to hide their personal information from banking and business accounts on WhatsApp.

Here’s how you can use WhatsApp's new privacy features.

Open WhatsApp and head over to the app’s settings. Now, tap on ‘Account’ and then ‘Privacy’ and tap on desired personal information you want to hide. You will see the ‘My contacts except’ option, from that menu, you can select the contacts with whom you don’t want to share personal information such as online status, profile picture or last seen.

With all these new security features WhatsApp is trying to give more control to users over its personal data. But the survey has found that about 53% of Indian users have reported that they are seeing advertisement-based messages on their WhatsApp.