O WhatsApp began to release, in Brazil, new stricter settings aimed at users under 18 years old. The change primarily affects who can view certain profile information.
As of the update, teen accounts will no longer be able to set the “Last seen”, “About” and “Links” privacy options to “All”. Only “Nobody”, “My contacts” and “My contacts except…” remain available.
In practice, this prevents anyone outside the contact list from seeing when the young person was last online, reading their description or accessing links added to the profile, such as social networks. The measure reduces the public exposure of personal data.
If the “All” setting was active before the change, the application automatically adjusts it to “My contacts”. Additionally, a warning is displayed informing you that the changes were applied due to Brazilian legislation.
The update is in line with the so-called ECA Digital, which determines that online platforms adopt, by default, high levels of protection for children and adolescents. Thus, the application automatically offers more restrictive settings for this audience.
The new feature was initially identified in version 2.26.8.7 of the Beta and is gradually being released to testers. For now, there is no official date for the arrival of the stable version for all users in the country.
Despite this, as the feature has already left the development phase and entered public testing, the expectation is that broad implementation will take place soon.
