WhatsApp groups are a great way to stay connected with family, friends, or colleagues, but this feature is often exploited by many to add of people to groups to sell products or improve services.
These groups are often formed without the consent of the participants and this can be frustrating for many. Most of us hate being part of unnecessary groups and often think that it is foolish to leave a group.
The best way to get out of this is to have a filter that will stop random people from adding you to groups.
How to prevent anonymous users from adding you to WhatsApp groups Thankfully, there is a setting you can use in the privacy section of your WhatsApp account that saves you from being added to random groups.
This setting allows you to customize who can add you to groups and, by default, the setting is set to ‘Everyone’, which means anyone with your phone number can add you to a group.
It is important to know that group managers can send you invitations and invite you to join groups, even if you have already used the settings.
To avoid being added to groups by random people, follow these steps below:
- Open WhatsApp, click on the three dots in the top right corner of the screen.
- Click the Settings option and tap Account.
- Click Privacy> Groups. Default settings may be set to ‘Everyone’.
- You can choose from three options – ‘Everyone’, ‘Contacts’, and ‘External Contacts’.
- The ‘Everyone’ option allows any user with your phone number to add you to a group without your permission.
- The ‘My Contacts’ option allows those users to add you to groups of their numbers that you have saved in your contacts list.
- The last ‘External Contacts’ option allows you to choose exactly who can add you to groups by allowing you to further sort and delete contacts you do not want to be added to the group.
