WhatsApp Rolls Out Strict Account Settings For Protection Against Highly Sophisticated Cyber Attacks
The Strict Account Settings are ideal for public-facing figures, who are usually at a higher risk of being targets of cyber attacks.
Published : January 28, 2026 at 5:56 PM IST
Hyderabad: Meta-owned WhatsApp has announced a new lockdown-style feature called Strict Account Settings. It is designed to offer extreme safeguards against rare and highly-sophisticated cyber attacks to users like journalists or public-facing figures. With Strict Account Settings enabled, WhatsApp blocks attachments and media from people who are not in their contact list.
WhatsApp mentions that Strict Account Settings is one of the many ways that the instant messaging platform works to protect its users from the most sophisticated cyber threats. The company states that this high-security feature is rolling out gradually over the coming weeks.
WhatsApp highlights that once the Strict Account Settings are activated, the instant messaging app will go into the most restrictive settings and will limit its normal functioning and block attachments and media files from people who are not in the user’s contact list.
To enable it, a user needs to go to Settings > Privacy > Advanced > Strict Account Settings.
Along with this feature, WhatsApp now uses a programming language called Rust to protect users' photos, videos, and messages from spyware. This language switch allows them to share media files and chat without the fear of getting cyber attacked.
Meta claims that Rust is a memory-safe programming language that offers numerous security benefits. The company believes that this is the largest rollout globally of any library written in Rust.
Meta highlighted that it developed the Rust version of wamedia in parallel with the original C++ version. For the unversed, wamedia is WhatsApp's internal, high-performance library, which is used to process, format, and parse media files (like photos, videos, and PDFs) across its mobile and desktop apps. The company mentioned that it used differential fuzzing and extensive integration and unit tests to ensure compatibility between the two implementations.
Meta replaced 160,000 lines of C++ code with 90,000 lines of Rust, which is claimed to have showcased performance and runtime memory usage advantages over C++ code.
With the integration of Rust, WhatsApp’s security team aims to develop a secure, high-performance, cross-platform library to enable users to share media safely across devices.
