Most of us treat WhatsApp security as a solved problem: messages are end-to-end encrypted, so what else is there? Quite a lot, if someone is deliberately trying to get into your phone. Meta’s messaging app has now added a mode called Strict Account Settings that assumes exactly that, and it is rolling out gradually to users around the world from Tuesday.
What the switch actually changes
Turning it on applies several hard rules at once rather than asking you to hunt through menus:
- Photos, videos and other media sent by numbers not in your contacts are blocked automatically, so a malicious file cannot even be downloaded by accident.
- Link previews are switched off. The little thumbnail that appears when someone pastes a URL is generated by fetching that page, which is one of the quiet ways a device can be fingerprinted or attacked.
- Calls from unknown numbers are silenced. They still show up in the call list, but the phone will not ring.
None of these features is new on its own — WhatsApp has offered “silence unknown callers” for a while. What is new is bundling them into a single, deliberately restrictive profile, in the same spirit as Apple’s Lockdown Mode on the iPhone.
Who it is meant for
WhatsApp is explicit that this is not a setting for everyone. In its announcement the company says all conversations are already protected by encryption, but journalists, human-rights defenders and public figures face a different class of attacker: sophisticated, well-funded and patient. Spyware such as Pegasus has historically been delivered through exactly the channels this mode closes — a booby-trapped image, a link, a missed call.
John Scott-Railton of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, which has spent years documenting attacks on dissidents, welcomed the change and added a second point: a feature like this puts pressure on other platforms to take their own high-risk users seriously.
Should ordinary users bother?
If your WhatsApp is mostly family groups and office chatter, the trade-offs will annoy you. Media from a new contact — a delivery rider, a customer, a relative with a new number — will not come through until you save the number. But the mode is worth a look for two groups in Bangladesh specifically: people who receive a steady stream of “your parcel is waiting” and lottery scam calls, and anyone whose public role makes them a target, from reporters to local activists. You will find it under Settings → Privacy once the rollout reaches your account. It can be switched off again at any time.
