How to Broadcast (bcc) a WhatsApp message and what it means

When living abroad or in a different city than your family and friends, it sometimes gets hard to keep in touch. Nowadays most people are using WhatsApp (though this may have decreased due toseveral pesky reasons) which makes it a lot easier to get in touch. Even aunts, uncles, grandmas and grandpas are catching on. A great way to save time yet still give others updates or just share some news, is to broadcast a message to various people within a broadcast list. This is just like the bcc function (blind carbon copy) in email. The best part is that each person won’t know that the message is also sent to others.

First you will have to set up a broadcast list with the people that should receive common messages in the future, like your extended family for example or perhaps a group a friends, study group to set up home work sessions or your children. There are many different scenarios here.

1. Open the WhatsApp application.

2. From the main chats screen, hit the menu button of your smartphone, which is either one of the capacitative or the action menu button on the top right corner.

3. In the ‘New broadcast list’ page, hit the + symbol which will bring up all of your contacts. Scroll through and check the boxes next to the names you would like in your group.

4. Once this is done, hit ‘Create’.

5. WhatsApp reminds you that only users that have your phone number in their address book will get the message.

6. After you have created this group, you can either send a message right away or go back to this group whenever you need it in the future. You will see a little loudspeaker symbol next to the usual message timestamp.

7. The good thing is, the others won’t be able to see the contact names or phone numbers. They will get the message as a normal message and when they reply, you’ll get a normal message from that individual contact in your Chats screen, not in the Broadcast List. It’s really a one-way street.

You can also edit the group after having made it, it’s not set in stone. To do this, open the Broadcast List once again and hit the menu button. Select Broadcast list info. Here you can choose a name for that group, add recipients, remove them or delete the entire list completely.