Would you like to take a screenshot of a WhatsApp Status but are afraid that your contact might find out? Here's what to do to go unnoticed
The WhatsApp Status is among the most popular tools made available by the Facebook-owned messaging platform. It has over half a billion daily users (the latest official figure speaks of 450 million users, but it's from June 2018) and allows you to share images or short videos accompanied by a text (in short, like Instagram Stories) with your WhatsApp contacts.
What happens, though, in case we want to take a screenshot of a Status that particularly interests us? Will it go unnoticed or will the person who uploaded it receive a notification alerting them to what happened? A feature present on Instagram, but removed within a few weeks following rather vehement protests from users. And, given the close link between Instagram Stories and WhatsApp Status, it seems more than natural to wonder whether or not after taking the screenshot of the WhatsApp status is sent a notification to your contact.
Screenshot WhatsApp Status, what happens
Exactly as it happens on Instagram, WhatsApp does not send any notification to your contacts. You can take a screenshot 1, 10 or 100 times or of all the Statuses you view and the situation does not change: this operation will remain private and no one will ever know about it. The same applies, however, in reverse: anyone with your number can see the Statuses you've uploaded and take screenshots. This, however, raises (or should raise) more than a few doubts on the privacy front: someone in possession of your number could spy on you without your knowledge and "take pictures" of all the content you post.
How to improve WhatsApp Status privacy
To avoid problems of this kind, WhatsApp offers several options to better manage your Status privacy. From the platform's Settings, just click on Account > Privacy > Status. Here you'll be able to choose whether to share it with all the contacts in your address book, to exclude someone from this list or to choose only certain contacts with whom to share the timed content uploaded to WhatsApp.