I do get communications from strangers on WhatsApp. Now there is a facility to silence calls like these, although they will still show in the calls tab and notifications.
Press the menu icon, then ‘settings’ and ‘privacy’. Now find ‘calls’ and now one can s’ilence unknown callers’.
It is also possible to block contacts in chats. Go to the chat with whoever you wish to block, press the menu icon, then ‘more’ to get to ‘block’ – and ‘report’ for this contact if you feel it is inappropriate.
WhatsApp is great, but sometimes I just want to send a message quickly. However, people can see that I’m online and start up conversations when I’d rather get on with something urgent.
You can hide your last seen and online status by going to the three dot menu and choosing settings. Now go to privacy and open ‘last seen and online’. Now choose the level of invisibility you want. Note that if people can’t see your status, then you can’t see theirs.
This is really helpful if you delete a message that you didn’t mean to.
First go to settings or the three-dot menu then settings. Now tap ‘chats’ and ‘chat backup’. Now you can set how often you want to backup. Think carefully about this when you read the below.
If you need to get a message back, then you need to uninstall WhatsApp and download it again from your app store. This will then enable you to restore from a backup. What this means is that you will lose anything that’s come in since the last backup and you will only be able to restore the message you deleted if it is the backup. So it’s a bit nuclear.
YouTube is great for finding videos on nearly anything – I put stuff up there myself at https://www.youtube.com/user/flyingdoctorUK
However, there are more and more adverts and sponsor messages interrupting the video you want to watch.
You can use the extension ‘Adblock for YouTube’ that blocks the ads. You can unblock any channel if you want to support the creators. In the same way ‘SponsorBlock for YouTube’ that skips sponsor messages and “other annoying parts of YouTube videos”. The developer of SponsorBlock claims that 3 million or so users have saved a total of 585 years between them.
More and more YouTube videos have adverts, when you just want to see the video. Adblock for YouTubeTM (note the TM as there are similar apps) is a useful way in Chrome, Edge and Firefox to block them and also some annoying overlays. If you do want to support the creator, it’s simple to turn the blocker off.
WhatsApp is great, but what if you want to keep things private?
A great new feature of WhatsApp is the ability to create photo or video messages that can only be seen just once. Create a message and add a video or photo in the caption area you’ll see a 1 in a circle. Tap this and the message can only be seen once by the recipient before disappearing or will delete if unopened for 14 days. Great for sharing passwords and other confidential stuff. Just be aware that they cab still photograph the screen, for example, to keep a copy.
Secondly, you can set a chat so that all messages will disappear after a set length of time. This doesn’t work for all group chats, where you need to be the group admin. Open the chat and press the chat name at the top. In the options below you will see ‘disappearing messages’. Turn this on and any new messages will disappear seven days after being sent.
If you are in a group chat but don’t want your comment to be seen by all the rest of the group, long-press the message and then the three dots at the top right. Choose ‘reply privately’ to open the contacts window so you can message just the message creator.
After starting data-sharing with Facebook, WhatsApp has reportedly changed a setting to allow anyone to add you to a group: this might mean marketing businesses or, more worryingly, scams or loan sharks or whatever.
To change the setting on your phone so that only those in your contact list (or even fewer) can add you to groups, go to settings> account >privacy>groups and select ‘my contacts’ or ‘my contacts except’
With the rise of computer-based video and audio systems, Whatsapp can be put onto your Windows or Apple computer so that you get the benefits of a bigger screen and keyboard.
Whatsapp on the computer still needs to use your phone, so make sure wifi is on to keep costs down.
Simply go to www.whatsapp.com/download and download the appropriate program. Then run it and a QR code pops up on your screen. Go to Whatsapp on your phone, move to the home screen. Now open the menu (usually the icon with three dots) and select Whatsapp web. Point the phone camera at the QR code and everything on your phone now goes to your computer!
I have a number of customers who are consultants, therapists, etc. Due to the virus outbreak, I did some looking into working over the internet with other people to stay in business.
Some of the accrediting bodies are quite rightly very cautious on customer confidentiality. This can be compromised on a number of methods that we all use. The issue is that other people can intercept the audio and video streams going past.
To prevent this, we need End to End Encryption (E2EE). Fortunately, there are several excellent open-source (free) tools. Another benefit to open-source is that the code is available to anyone to review and comment, potentially making it better than proprietary solutions who can build in secret monitoring.
Before we get to them, Skype itself claims to offer e2e as an option: select ‘new private conversation’ from the new chat menu as long as you both have versions of Skype that allow e2e, however commentators claim that there are records of the call, but not of the content of the call.
Skype’s Private Conversations is based on Signal, a rather good tool from Open Whisper Systems. Signal is even supported and trusted by the famous or infamous Edward Snowden.
With Signal, just install the software at each end (phone or PC), allow certain permissions and off you go.
Sometimes we may wish to disguise what is behind us during a Skype call – maybe to make the bedroom that we are working in look more like an office or hide our taste in wallpaper. Maybe you just want the fashionable ’Bokeh’ effect that you can get on smartphone cameras.
Now PC versions of Skype have that capability. So Android and iOS versions are out of luck. Right-click on the video button and select ‘Blur my background’.
It’s a software effect so the good news is that it will work with all webcams, but the bad news is that some computers may not have the capability to process it.