The company will launch an update that prevents the user from deleting the message, if not done within a certain period of time.
The feature, which is available on iOS, Android and Windows, replaces the message with a note, stating: “This message was deleted”.
The world’s most popular messenger wants to increase the cut-off from seven minutes – to 1 hour 8 minutes and 16 seconds, according to reports.
What does this mean?
If the recipient of the message does not receive the deletion request within 13 hours, 8 minutes, and 16 seconds, the message can not be deleted later.
The move aims to protect users who delete a message sent weeks, months or years ago.
WhatsApp launched the message retrieval service in late 2017, where the time allowed to do so was only 7 minutes from the time the message was sent. Before the application changes the message deletion duration to 4096 seconds (ie 68 minutes: 1 hour, 8 minutes, 16 seconds).