If there’s one topic that people are particularly concerned about on the internet, it’s data protection. However, you can’t be anonymous everywhere, and especially with WhatsApp, it’s always been the case that when you make contact, your mobile phone number is visible to the new chat partner in plain text .

Especially in groups, or when a child gets their first cell phone and thus their first personal number, it can happen that the number falls into the wrong hands. WhatsApp now wants to change this.

WhatsApp catches up with other messengers

With other messaging apps, like Telegram, Signal, and other systems, you can easily protect your privacy by setting up a pseudonym instead of a number , which other people can use to connect. This way, your number isn’t directly visible to unknown and new people.

However, WhatsApp also plans to link such pseudonyms to the number, ensuring that the number can remain as secret as possible. According to WABetaInfo , the feature that is supposed to make this “obfuscation” of the number possible has been discovered in the current beta version of WhatsApp.