A couple of weeks back WhatsApp made a slight change to its mobile applications that had drastic implications. The double-check marks that appear alongside a message would now turn blue when the recipient reads the message, thus rendering the excuse “I’m sorry I didn’t see you message,” useless. Fortunately yet another change has been made which now allows users to turn off WhatsApp read receipts on Android.
You will certainly be mistaken if you believe that the double-check mark that always pop up when you send a message on WhatsApp indicate that the message has been read. It simply means that your message has only been received by the user, and doesn’t necessarily mean that they have read it. Double-check marks going blue confirms it beyond a shadow of the doubt that the person on the other end has indeed read your message.
Version 2.11.44 of the WhatsApp Android application comes with a new option under the privacy section of the settings menu. It allows you to turn off read receipts which means people who message you won’t be able to see whether you’ve read it or not. However to keep things fair WhatsApp doesn’t allow you to take advantage of this feature while you’ve got it turned off for yourself. So you won’t be able to view blue double-check marks when you send a message as well.
This doesn’t change anything for group chats where other members of the group will be able to see if the message has been viewed. At this point in time the ability to do this is limited to the Android app but it shouldn’t take too long before it spreads across iOS and Windows Phone.