The latest WhatsApp beta adds an important privacy feature, giving users the ability to hide their phone numbers.

WhatsApp has been adding a number of privacy features, but the last one takes it a step further. WABetaInfo describes the new feature:

In the past few months, WhatsApp quietly started testing a new feature for communities that would add an extra layer of privacy to your account when joining a community. This feature, called “phone number privacy”, ensures that your phone number is always hidden from other members of the community. In reality, when you join a community, the community participants list is already hidden in the community announcement group, but users cannot interact with the community announcement group through message reactions as this action would reveal their phone number. Thanks to this feature, the phone number will remain hidden even when adding a reaction to a message. This feature was available to a very limited group of users and it seems it is finally widely rolling out to more users on the latest version of the app!

The feature is good news for users, giving them a powerful option for protecting their privacy.