As much as Whatsapp has been a breath of fresh air in the world helping us connect instantly and for free to our contacts, it has also become a bit of nuisance. Asking someone, if they are on whatsapp and to drop a message there has become a bit of a new trick to take somebody’s phone number. Comments on your status update and profile picture are also unwelcome distraction, especially if you are a girl. Whatsapp recently rolled an update for Android devices, where they gave the users an option to turn off their profile picture, last seen feature as well as the status message from people they did not want to share it with.

A similar update has now rolled out on iOS 7.1 today, making Whatsapp a lot more private closed space that it should always have been.

Once you have the latest Whatsapp update on your device, which is version 2.11.8 or beyond, simply follow the steps below to turn these privacy settings on:

Step 1:

Fire Whatsapp application on your iOS device.

Step 2:

Tap on the settings icon which is located at the extreme right on the bottom.

Step 3:

Tap on Account which will take you to a screen like above, where you will have to click on Privacy.

Step 4:

In Privacy, you can go ahead and select who gets to see your Last Seen, Profile Photo and Status Update. You can pick from three different options, including, nobody, your contacts and everybody in each of the three instances. However, it is worth noting that if you turn off your Last Seen to “nobody”, you would also not be able to see when the contact was last Offline unless you two happen to be Online at the same time.

Not just this, the update has brought with it some exciting new wallpapers, which can be accessed from Settings-> Chat Settings-> Chat Wallpapers-> Wallpaper Library. You can pick these or any wallpaper from your library ad set it up as the Chat background on your Whatsapp.