Amid Ukraine crisis, here’s how users can secure WhatsApp, Meta accounts

Meta-owned messaging app WhatsApp on Sunday issued a host of security measures to help users across the world protect their profiles amid the Ukraine-Russia war.

“Our thoughts are with everyone affected by the war in Ukraine. Here is some important information on how to protect and safeguard your privacy for our users in Ukraine and around the world,” WhatsApp said in a tweet.

In another statement, Meta Platforms Inc. said the company has added special safety features for Facebook users in Ukraine and has deployed a team of experts to monitor the social media platform.

“We’ve established a special operations center staffed by experts from across the company, including native Russian and Ukrainian speakers, who are monitoring the platform around the clock, allowing us to respond to issues in real time. We’ve added several safety features in Ukraine, including the ability for people to lock their Facebook profile, removing the ability to view and search friends list, and additional tools on Messenger,” the statement read.

Meta said it has expanded its third-party fact-checking capacity in Russian and Ukrainian to fight fake news in the midst of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and seeks to provide more transparency around state-controlled media outlets by disallowing ads from Russian state media and “demonetizing their accounts.”

WhatsApp, on the other hand, has advised users to enable the two-step verification measure to secure their accounts from hackers as well as switch on the fingerprint lock to access the app.

“As a reminder, we have limits on message forwarding and we label messages that haven’t originated with the sender so people are aware that something is information from a third party,” WhatsApp said in one of the tweets.

Meta also informed that it will delete content from its platform which violates the social blogging website’s policies and is constantly working with third-party fact-checkers to stop misinformation. Content rated as false by these fact-checkers are moved to the bottom of the feed to enable fewer people to see it.

“To supplement labels from our fact-checking partners, we are warning users in the region when they try to share some war-related images that our systems detect are over one year old so people have more information about outdated or misleading images that could be taken out of context,” Meta said in the statement.

“We’ve also made it easier for fact-checkers to find and rate content related to the war because we recognise that speed is especially important during breaking news events. We use keyword detection to group related content in one place, making it easy for fact-checkers to find. We’re also giving people more information to decide what to read, trust and share by adding warning labels on content rated false by third-party fact-checkers and applying labels to state-controlled media publishers,” it said.