Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google introduced the Profiles characteristic in Google Messages final 12 months, however it’s nonetheless within the strategy of rolling out this profile discovery characteristic to all customers.
- We’ve noticed settings that point out Google is including some privateness choices for this profile discovery characteristic.
- This could give customers management over who can see their profile identify and movie.
Google Messages is again within the limelight nowadays as the first medium for RCS messaging on the Android platform. Increasingly more firms are ditching their messaging apps in favor of Google Messages, so it is necessary for Messages to evolve right into a service that fulfills the wants and expectations of a wider person base. Google formally introduced Profiles again in November 2023 as a manner for profile discovery. Whereas the characteristic remains to be seeing a spotty rollout, we’ve noticed clues that point out Google is engaged on fixing privateness considerations round profile discovery.
An APK teardown helps predict options that will arrive on a service sooner or later primarily based on work-in-progress code. Nevertheless, it’s attainable that such predicted options could not make it to a public launch.
As a part of the Profiles, aka the Profile Discovery characteristic, customers can select to:
- Use both the identify out of your profile or a brief identify.
- Present or disguise your profile image.
Google Messages v20241010 beta consists of modifications that give customers extra granular controls over who can see their identify and profile image. We managed to activate the choices for this upcoming characteristic:
With the brand new choices inside Google Messages, you will have three decisions for profile privateness and visibility:
- Folks you message: This feature will probably present everybody you message your identify and profile photograph first. It can be interpreted as much like setting your profile to “Public” on a social media web site, letting everybody discover you after they search for your quantity by way of the Profile Discovery characteristic.
- Solely your contacts: This feature will probably prohibit your identify and profile image and make it seen to solely folks in your telephone’s contact ebook.
- Nobody: This feature will probably disguise your identify and profile image from everybody.
These new choices will probably be offered to customers after they log into Google Messages for the primary time (as soon as this variation rolls out), as you possibly can see within the first screenshot. Submit initialization, it is possible for you to to entry this setting by way of the “Your profile” choice within the account switcher, as you possibly can see within the second screenshot.
It’s unclear if selecting the “Nobody” choice will flip off profile discovery options. Nonetheless, the flexibleness of those choices will treatment an excellent chunk of respectable privateness considerations that folks had about their identify and profile image being seen to anybody with their quantity and even to individuals who randomly looked for numbers.
It’s essential to notice that you simply nonetheless can’t set a special profile image or identify for Google Messages. Your profile on Google Messages takes the identify and movie of your Google account, i.e., your Gmail profile image.
Profiles haven’t been broadly rolled out to all Google Messages customers but, even a 12 months after their announcement. However it’s good to see Google make progress on fixing privateness considerations earlier than a wider rollout. We don’t know when this characteristic will probably be out there to all customers, however we’ll maintain you up to date.
