BERLIN: Sometimes, muting or blocking a person in a chat app is not enough. To this end, Signal, the popular privacy-focussed messaging app, is now introducing an option to remove all trace of a person from the app.

WhatsApp already lets you mute and block contacts, as well as delete a particular chat from your app. Telegram also lets you mute, archive and delete contacts, and even lets you delete the entire chat for both you and the other user.

Now, Signal users, too, can decide for themselves who they want to see in the messenger's contact list and the Signal Foundation has announced that you can delete contacts from the app if you no longer want them to appear there.

"Remove the ghost of an old contact by long-pressing on their name in the contact list on the New Chat screen and selecting the 'Remove' option," Signal says in its latest update.

If you also want to delete the contact in your smartphone address book, then you need to delete the person there, too. Afterwards, there is no sign - on your own device at least - that you and this person ever came into contact.

Deleted contacts not only disappear from your Signal contact list, they are also no longer displayed when searching for contacts. Deleted contacts no longer have access to your current profile photo or stories.

You can still send messages to the contact if you reach them through a group chat, for example. However, the Signal app will first remind you that you have actually deleted this contact and that sending the message will add them back to the Signal contact list.

You can still be contacted by a deleted contact. However, you will then receive a request from Signal asking whether you want to allow the contact to send a message. You can either accept this or simply block the contact.

The delete function is now available in the latest versions of Signal (Android 6.38, iOS 6.48 and Desktop 6.37).

 - dpa