Zalo application blocks avatar screenshots

On April 23, Zalo said it had added the feature to prevent taking screenshots of avatars on the application. Accordingly, the Zalo application on the phone automatically recognizes and limits others from taking screenshots of the phone’s avatar. “This helps enhance the privacy of Zalo users,” the announcement said.

When trying to click to view details of another person’s profile picture and take a screenshot, the result will display a black screen. Previously, Zalo also did not allow users to download other people’s avatars.

However, in reality, preventing taking other people’s profile pictures has not been thoroughly implemented by this platform. For example, when chatting through the Zalo website, users can still view and download other people’s avatars.

A Zalo representative said security features “will continue to be improved and upgraded to provide a better privacy and security experience for users”.

Blocking viewing or downloading other people’s profile pictures is one of the security features applied by many messaging and social networking platforms around the world to prevent impersonation of other people’s accounts. For example, Facebook has a Lock feature to protect your personal page so that others cannot view large-sized profile pictures, WhatsApp blocks taking screenshots of your profile picture, and Telegram has a limit setting for others to view your account’s profile picture.

In reply VnExpress Last year, Zalo founder Vuong Quang Khai also emphasized privacy as one of the core elements built for the platform. This is also the reason they do not provide some features that many other chat platforms have, such as archiving old messages and logging in on multiple devices.

In the announcement on April 23, Zalo also recommended that users can make some settings to increase account security, such as customizing display and access rights to birthdays, diaries, and making friends.

Additionally, users can enable two-layer security to protect accounts. When a Zalo account is logged in with a password on a new device, the system will require additional authentication with an authentication code. The authentication code is sent to the old device, phone number or email address that the user associates with the Zalo account.

Zalo is a messaging and calling platform on mobile phones and computers, first launched in August 2012. To date, this is one of the most popular messaging applications in Vietnam, with about 80 million regular monthly users and nearly 2.1 billion messages sent every day.