WhatsApp's Delete for Everyone feature can be bypassed using this simple trick
With over one and a half billion users, WhatsApp is the most popular cross-platform instant messaging service on the planet Earth right now. Back in November last year, in an attempt to make the user experience better it introduced the highly anticipated '#-Link-Snipped-#' feature. The feature allowed its users to delete a sent message within seven minutes of sending it. It was very well received by the users providing a huge relief for a lot of people as this allowed them to delete a message if sent by a mistake to the wrong group or to the wrong person.
Interestingly, a new simple trick has surfaced which can render this feature useless. With the new trick, you can now bypass the Delete for everyone feature quite easily by simply quoting a message before it is deleted for everyone within seven minutes by the sender.
To elaborate, if I send an unintended message to the wrong WhatsApp group or a contact and any of the group members or the recipient of that message on a private chat replies to that using the quote feature, the original message will continue to show in the quoted box even if I delete the original message later (within seven minutes of sending it). The screenshot will further make things clear.
Now, this particular trick only works when the deleted message has already been read or interacted with. So it is of little use in one to one private chats as the recipient has already read it, making deleting the message useless.
But in groups, if any one of the group members sees your unintended message and replies to it using a quote, then even after you delete the original message within seven minutes of sending and before other members seeing it, the quoted message will prevail which other members can see.
Though the trick is reported to be a feature and not a bug, in any case, one should be careful while talking with people who have the habit of using quotes.
It is worth noting that another trick exists which makes possible to recover the deleted messages in WhatsApp by accessing the Android's notification history. You can read in details about that trick, How to read WhatsApp deleted messages.
Source: #-Link-Snipped-#
Interestingly, a new simple trick has surfaced which can render this feature useless. With the new trick, you can now bypass the Delete for everyone feature quite easily by simply quoting a message before it is deleted for everyone within seven minutes by the sender.
To elaborate, if I send an unintended message to the wrong WhatsApp group or a contact and any of the group members or the recipient of that message on a private chat replies to that using the quote feature, the original message will continue to show in the quoted box even if I delete the original message later (within seven minutes of sending it). The screenshot will further make things clear.
Now, this particular trick only works when the deleted message has already been read or interacted with. So it is of little use in one to one private chats as the recipient has already read it, making deleting the message useless.
But in groups, if any one of the group members sees your unintended message and replies to it using a quote, then even after you delete the original message within seven minutes of sending and before other members seeing it, the quoted message will prevail which other members can see.
Though the trick is reported to be a feature and not a bug, in any case, one should be careful while talking with people who have the habit of using quotes.
It is worth noting that another trick exists which makes possible to recover the deleted messages in WhatsApp by accessing the Android's notification history. You can read in details about that trick, How to read WhatsApp deleted messages.
Source: #-Link-Snipped-#
Replies
You are reading an archived discussion.
Related Posts
One designer’s weekend journey from sketches, through the layers of iterations, to a finished product.
Designing a Better Bike Seat
From the Montgomery Glider to the Dash 80, here are nine groundbreaking innovations that changed the course of aerospace history.
70 Years of ASME Aerospace Milestones
In another first, Samsung Electronics has revealed the world's largest capacity Serial Attached SCSI(SAS) SSD with a mind-boggling capacity of 30.72TB- packed in just a 2.5-inch form factor. Though it...
The TI Robotics Systems Learning Kit (TI-RSLK) is a low-cost robotics kit and classroom curriculum, which provide students with a deeper understanding of how electronic system designs work. Developed in...
(Disclaimer: I am just a postman here. It is all Mandarin and Japanese to me)
Quote:
In the tech world, there are thousands of tools that people will tell you...