Security News > 2023 > November > WhatsApp now lets users hide their location during calls
WhatsApp is rolling out a new privacy feature that helps Android and iOS users hide their location during calls by relaying the connection through WhatsApp servers.
As the company's engineering team explained today, the users' location is hidden from other call participants by switching from the standard peer-to-peer direct connection between callers using the company's servers to obfuscate IP address metadata that could contain information on the users' internet service provider or broad geographical location.
While the calls are proxied through WhatsApp's servers to make it harder to infer location information, it says that it cannot listen in as all calls are end-to-end encrypted.
"Most calling products people use today have peer-to-peer connections between participants. This direct connection allows for faster data transfers and better call quality, but it also means that participants need to know each other's IP addresses so that call data packets can be delivered to the correct device - meaning that the IP addresses are visible to both callers on a 1:1 call," WhatsApp engineers explained.
With the new "Protect IP Address in Calls" feature enabled, "All your calls will be relayed through WhatsApp's servers, ensuring that other parties in the call cannot see your IP address and subsequently deduce your general geographical location. This new feature provides an additional layer of privacy and security particularly geared towards our most privacy-conscious users."
This is part of a broader effort to boost WhatsApp users' privacy, with the company introducing in June 2023 a Silence Unknown Callers setting that screens out calls automatically if they're from unknown contacts.