WhatsApp partners with Anushka Sharma for privacy campaign, launches new features

HYDERABAD: WhatsApp has on Tuesday partnered with actor Anushka Sharma to launch a campaign which will have a series of mirrored messages appearing in private spaces - women’s restrooms - in malls across Delhi. The Meta-owned messaging app believes that everyone should have a safe space to communicate with their family and friends, and so to encourage women to check in on each other privately.

As part of the campaign, WhatsApp will enable disappearing messages to appear on the restroom mirrors when triggered by motion, alongside a QR code that offers suggestions for checking in via a private WhatsApp message.

The launch comes after a research from YouGov, commissioned by WhatsApp, reveals that almost three quarters of women across the world (73%) and 68% of women in India said that they would open up about their struggles if a friend reached out to them in private.

Speaking about the campaign, actor Anushka Sharma said, “Women don’t always feel safe to speak up about issues they’re facing, however they tend to open up with a friend who reaches out to them, privately.”

“I’ve partnered with WhatsApp to drive awareness around the importance of having a secure space for women to confide in others and how a private conversation can be empowering for women to speak up and seek help when their safety and well-being might be at risk,” she added.

Vice president of Meta India, Sandhya Devanathan said, “At WhatsApp, we believe protecting users’ personal conversations with their family and friends is the most important type of privacy we can give them. We’re thrilled to add two new privacy-first features that further strengthen and add to WhatsApp’s built-in layers of protection to offer users a safe space to have their most private conversations.”

To coincide with the launch of the campaign, Mark Zuckerberg has announced a new privacy feature, 'Silence Unknown Callers,' which helps to screen out spam, scams and calls from unknown people for greater control over your calls.

WhatsApp is also rolling out another feature called ‘Privacy Checkup,’ a step-by-step feature that guides users through important privacy settings on the app and helps choose the right level of protection, all in one place.