Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google announced the Profiles feature in Google Messages last year, but it is still in the process of rolling out this profile discovery feature to all users.
- We’ve spotted settings that indicate Google is adding some privacy options for this profile discovery feature.
- This would give users control over who can see their profile name and picture.
Google Messages is back in the limelight these days as the primary medium for RCS messaging on the Android platform. More and more companies are ditching their messaging apps in favor of Google Messages, so it is important for Messages to evolve into a service that fulfills the needs and expectations of a wider user base. Google officially announced Profiles back in November 2023 as a way for profile discovery. While the feature is still seeing a spotty rollout, we’ve spotted clues that indicate Google is working on fixing privacy concerns around profile discovery.
An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
As part of the Profiles, aka the Profile Discovery feature, users can choose to:
- Use either the name from your profile or a short name.
- Show or hide your profile picture.
Google Messages v20241010 beta includes changes that give users more granular controls over who can see their name and profile picture. We managed to activate the options for this upcoming feature:
With the new options inside Google Messages, you have three choices for profile privacy and visibility:
- People you message: This option will likely show everyone you message your name and profile photo first. It can also be interpreted as similar to setting your profile to “Public” on a social media website, letting everyone find you when they look up your number through the Profile Discovery feature.
- Only your contacts: This option will likely restrict your name and profile picture and make it visible to only people in your phone’s contact book.
- No one: This option will likely hide your name and profile picture from everyone.
These new options will likely be presented to users when they log into Google Messages for the first time (once this change rolls out), as you can see in the first screenshot. Post initialization, you will be able to access this setting through the “Your profile” option in the account switcher, as you can see in the second screenshot.
It’s unclear if choosing the “No one” option will turn off profile discovery features. Nonetheless, the flexibility of these options will remedy a good chunk of legitimate privacy concerns that people had about their name and profile picture being visible to anyone with their number or even to people who randomly searched for numbers.
It’s important to note that you still cannot set a different profile picture or name for Google Messages. Your profile on Google Messages takes the name and picture of your Google account, i.e., your Gmail profile picture.
Profiles haven’t been widely rolled out to all Google Messages users yet, even a year after their announcement. But it’s good to see Google make progress on fixing privacy concerns before a wider rollout. We don’t know when this feature will be available to all users, but we’ll keep you updated.