WhatsApp is going to make your chats more secure

Your chats will soon be better protected from prying eyes, now that WhatsApp is testing a new feature.

The messaging service is introducing more and more new functionalities more and more often. WhatsApp is lagging behind some competitors, but we continue to use the service en masse. Now the company comes with a new feature for Android users, making your backups more secure.

WhatsApp chats more secure

It is becoming increasingly important for social media platforms: privacy and security. And then also leave the choice to the users to be able to choose. Sure, WhatsApp already has end-to-end encryption, but what about your online backups? Many people use this. It would be very unfortunate if other people could see into this. WhatsApp is now working to better protect it as well.

As usual, WABetaInfo was the first to attend. She discovered that the latest WhatsApp beta for Android (2.21.15.5) includes a test for end-to-end encrypted cloud backups. You can sign up and then you don’t have to worry about hackers getting into your chat history and reading everything.

Notes

Yes, there are. Because you have to create a separate password to restore your backups. Besides, you can’t get them back if you lose both your smartphone and the password. The chances of that are pretty slim, but still. However, it is possible to create a 64-digit encryption key. However, the same applies here: if you lose this, you are also the loser. The messaging service is probably not yet ready to introduce this feature in the next stable release. It’s also unclear if everyone using the new beta will get the same backup functionality.

This new functionality comes at a good time. The messaging service is currently testing multi-device synchronization that does not rely on a phone connection. These encrypted backups don’t seem to be available on all devices, but it can be comforting as people increasingly rely on WhatsApp for chats on all their gadgets.