After offering end-to-end encryption for chats for several years now, Facebook-owned WhatsApp can now encrypt your chat backups as well. The new security feature was revealed last month and starts rolling out today.
Announced in Facebook blog post, the feature is rolling out “slowly” for users on the latest version of WhatsApp.
Once you have access to the new security feature, you will be able to encrypt your backups before they are sent to iCloud or Google Drive. You can protect your WhatsApp cloud backups with a password or a 64-digit encryption key, which means that no one else will be able to access the backup except you, not even the government.
Making backups is to guarantee that your chats are safe in the event that your devices are lost or stolen. It’s worth noting that if you lose your encryption password or key, you will be unable to recover your backups since neither WhatsApp nor your cloud provider will be able to decode the file.
“No other global messaging service at this scale provides this level of security for their users’ messages, media, voice messages, video calls and chat backups,” boasts Facebook in its blog post about the update.
When the security feature is available, open WhatsApp and navigate to Settings > Chats > Chat Backups > End-to-End Encrypted Backup and follow the instruction prompts.
More information about using end-to-end encryption to secure your chat backups on iOS and Android can be found here.
Image credit: Facebook
Source: Facebook
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