Key Highlights
- The feature is said to improve users’ privacy during calls, as the name suggests.
- The functionality will protect both outgoing and incoming calls by routing calls through the company rather than establishing a direct connection.
- This is slated to protect your IP address by not disclosing it to another person.
WhatsApp launched Silence Unknown Callers in June of this year. When the feature is turned on, all calls from unknown numbers do not ring your phone. Now it has introduced Protect IP Address in Calls, which hides your IP from the other party by relaying calls through WhatsApp servers.
Meta, through its Engineering at Meta blog post, revealed that it keeps working on improving and protecting the privacy of WhatsApp calls. WhatsApp chats come with end-to-end encryption protection for private communications. But for calls, it introduced Protect IP Address in Calls, which is optional in settings.
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As per the Meta engineers calling products an attractive vector for cyber attacks, PJSIP and WebRTC, have a long history of vulnerabilities. But on WhatsApp, they facilitate peer-to-peer connections between participants, allowing both callers to view each other’s IP addresses.
“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. IP addresses may contain information that some of our most privacy-conscious users are mindful of, such as broad geographical location or internet provider.”
In order to allay this worry, WhatsApp introduced Protect IP Address in Calls, which lets you protect your IP address while on calls. When the feature is turned on, all of your calls will be routed through WhatsApp’s servers, protecting your IP address. So the other caller cannot see your IP address. But WhatsApp cannot hear your calls, even if a call is relayed through WhatsApp servers, because your calls are end-to-end encrypted like chats.
