Many now also use WhatsApp to call. However, phone calls with the green app can expose users to a rather serious risk: in this article we explain how to best protect yourself.
WhatsApp is certainly one of the favorite applications among users. The green app is present in practically every corner of the world: the numbers reveal that the Meta app is used by around 2 billion users. WhatsApp continues to be very attractive despite the growing popularity of rival apps like Telegram and Signal. Much depends on the fact that Meta tends to update what is undoubtedly one of its most important applications very often. Users, in fact, can enjoy updates with a certain frequency that introduce many very interesting new features.
Nowadays with WhatsApp you can also do many other things besides simply chatting with various contacts. For example, it is also possible to make telephone and video calls: characteristics that proved to be very important during the Covid-19 pandemic and which also pushed people of a certain age to approach WhatsApp and understand how it works.
WhatsApp, watch out for calls: you run this risk
Many users, therefore, also use WhatsApp to make calls, although the advice is to pay close attention to this functionality. The risk, in fact, is that calls with the green app do not have an adequate level of protection in terms of privacy. How come?
Everyone who uses the Meta app knows that messages sent in chat are protected by end-to-end (E2E) encryption. The same, unfortunately, does not happen with calls: the risk is that your IP address will be shared. To ensure maximum protection even with phone calls, a particular function must be activated.
The first thing to do is go to the official WhatsApp page, specifically on the Help Center tab. The objective is in fact to activate the ‘Protect IP address’ functionality. Well yes, Meta is well aware of the risk of sharing the IP address during calls with its app and for this reason it has introduced a protection system that seems to be effective.
How to activate the function to protect the IP address
To activate this function, simply click on the three dots and then press on Settings. Click on Privacy and choose the Advanced option. Once this is done we will have the Protect IP address in calls function in front of us: all we have to do is activate it to no longer have to worry about anything during phone calls on WhatsApp.
By choosing this route we can avoid calls connecting directly to the green app’s servers. This way the contact will not be able to have access to the IP address.
