WhatsApp is further strengthening its privacy by deploying Protect IP Address in Calls, a feature to hide your IP address during your calls, by relaying communications through the platform’s servers.
Meta continues to secure WhatsApp, its fully encrypted instant messaging service, by adding new security features. The company has already added in recent months numerous options to guarantee the confidentiality of its users’ content, improving its Chat Lock confidentiality mode, the possibility of blocking screenshots for certain messages or even the support for access keys (passkeys), a technology that allows you to connect to websites without a password, using our biometric data (see our article). The company clearly does not intend to stop there!
To call your caller, WhatsApp uses a peer-to-peer connection so that the data transfer is faster and the audio is of better quality. But even though calls are end-to-end encrypted, this method reveals your IP address to others. This means that some of your data, such as your data provider and geographic location, is visible to the other participant, as long as they have the necessary technical skills. This is why Meta announces, in a blog postthe deployment of Protect IP Address in Calls (Protect IP address during calls, in the French version), a function that allows you to hide your IP address during your calls. A way of “ensure that other interlocutors cannot see your IP address and deduce your general geographic location”indicates WhatsApp.
WhatsApp: how to hide your IP address?
To hide your IP address, this tool relays all your calls through the company’s servers. This means your calls are not connected directly, preventing your IP address from being revealed to the person you are calling. Here is the procedure to follow to activate the function Protect IP Address in Calls:
► Launch the WhatsApp application on your smartphone.
► Once on the messaging home page, tap your profile photo at the top right.
► You arrive on a new page. Press on Confidentialityrepresented by a green padlock just below your username.
► Once in the section Confidentialityscroll down to the bottom of the page and select Advanced.
► All you have to do is activate the toggle Protect IP address during callswhich then changes from gray to green.
Please note, before considering using the new privacy setting, keep in mind that when your calls are relayed through WhatsApp’s servers, it is their quality may be reduced. Note that group calls are always relayed by the platform’s servers by default, so this new feature only concerns individual calls. And of course, as always with Meta instant messaging, calls remain end-to-end encrypted.