WhatsApp has become an integral part of millions of people’s daily lives, with its instant messaging service being used to catch up with friends and family, share pictures and videos, send jokes and more. With so much importance placed on the app, you may wonder how you can keep your chats secure in case someone picks up your phone while you’re in the loo or gets hold of it while it’s unattended. Whatever your reason, here are six ways to hide your WhatsApp chats from prying eyes.
1) Download Jota+
Download Jota+ for your Android or iPhone. This app allows you to use dual encrypted chat and keep it as secret as possible. You can also disable message previews if you're really paranoid about what someone could be doing on your phone while you're away.
2) Use Encryption Apps
This brings us to encryption. Encryption scrambles your messages so that only the sender and recipient can read them, much like a puzzle. Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is a common type of encryption that applies these scrambling algorithms to whole files. Other encryption methods, such as Off-The-Record (OTR), are designed for small files such as text messages, encrypting and decrypting individual messages on the fly. Signal offers both PGP and OTR features.
3) Disable Notifications
If you want to hide your WhatsApp chats, the easiest way is by disabling the app's notifications for a specific conversation. This will prevent any new messages from appearing in the notification drawer and limit how many messages can be seen at one time.
All you have to do is open a chat on your phone and go into Settings, then Data Usage, and finally Notifications. From there, you can toggle off your personal notifications for a particular chat or group of chats that are not relevant.
4) Create an Anonymous Email Account
If you want to be as discreet as possible, you'll need an anonymous email account. It's important that this account not have your actual name associated with it in any way. One of the best services for creating a totally off-the-radar email address is ProtonMail (you can also use RiseUp). You can easily create a new address and set up your ProtonMail account so that it automatically routes all incoming messages through the service.
5) Disguise Yourself as an App Developer
I’ve written a how-to guide that will help you conceal your chats. You don’t have to do anything fancy; it should work with all operating systems, with or without root access. Instructions on how to make an app are included so you can just press one button and protect your information! The only downside is that the user has to log in before they use the application. Hopefully this doesn't slow them down too much. Feel free to tweak it however you like!
6) Protect Your Data with a VPN
Once you've downloaded a VPN, you will be able to encrypt your data as it leaves your device. This means that if someone was to steal your phone and gets into your chats, they won't be able to see anything because the encrypted data is meaningless without the key.
#1. Encrypt Messages with PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) - With this method, you will need someone else's public key so that messages can be encrypted before they are sent.
