Joining a WhatsApp community comes with a lot of benefits, like the ability to chat with workmates or like-minded people. However, once you join a community, your phone number is put out for everyone to see, even if all you do is react to a message. It has made users feel like there should be some kind of privacy option — luckily, WhatsApp seems to be providing one.
According toWABetaInfo, WhatsApp is rolling out a new feature that will give users more control over their phone number’s visibility in communities. The feature, calledPhone number privacy, will allow users to choose whether their phone number is visible to other members of a community. The aim is to add a new layer of privacy that users can enable and disable on a per-community basis, but there are some limitations.
Community admin phone numbers are always visible to members of the community, and even with this new setting enabled, every user’s phone number is still visible to community admins. Additionally, if you use two separate phones instead of asecondary device, you’ll need to enable this feature on both phones.
Previously, your phone number was hidden by default in most cases when you joined a WhatsApp community, but not all. Numbers are not normally visible in the participants list of a community, however, they can be seen when a user posts a message in the community or reacts to someone else’s message. With this new setting enabled, your number will be hidden in these situations as well.
Using this feature is very simple: you just need to selectPhone number privacyin the community info tab. Here, you’ll also have the option of requesting another community member’s phone number if theirs is hidden. Once the request is accepted, the phone number will be revealed.
The new phone number privacy feature for communities was already available to a limited number of beta testers, but it appears to be making a wider rollout with the latest WhatsApp for Android update (v2.23.14.19) being seeded to beta channel users on the Google Play Store.
