WhatsApp Will Soon Let Users Protect Chat Backups on Cloud

The popular messaging app doesn’t offer end-to-end encryption security for chats saved on cloud.

WhatsApp provides end-to-end encryption for security of chats, but not on the cloud.

(Photo: The Quint)

WhatsApp is a popular messaging platform, with over 2 billion users across the globe. It claims to have end-to-end encryption, making sure nobody except for the sender and receiver of the message is able to read its content.

But most people might not be aware that WhatsApp chats saved on Google Drive (or Apple iCloud) are not encrypted, allowing any country’s government to request for accessing those messages, readable in simple steps.

Which is why it’s important to point out that WhatsApp in beta on Android is now allowing people to lock their chat backups with password. This update has been posted by WABetainfo on Tuesday, which has shared screenshots of the feature showing up in the settings of the messaging app.

The upcoming feature was spotted running on beta version 2.20.66 for Android users, allowing them to encrypt their WhatsApp chats on Google Drive, even though Google doesn’t do that on the cloud by default.

It’s not just the messages, even all the media content; photos, video and audio files can be accessed and read by anybody who gets hold of your account.

Media and messages you back up aren’t protected by WhatsApp end-to-end encryption while in Google Drive.

<a href="https://faq.whatsapp.com/en/android/28000019/?category=5245251">WhatsApp website</a>

Which is why this update shared about a new feature to protect content saved on the cloud will come as a big relief to the millions of you using WhatsApp across the globe.

The blog post mentions, “ the feature appears in the Chat backup settings and lets you easily encrypt your chat backups with a password so that neither WhatsApp nor Google is able to view its contents.”

New feature spotted on WhatsApp for Android.(Photo: WABetainfo)

How to Backup WhatsApp Chats on Drive

• Go to Settings on WhatsApp
  
• Select Chats where you’ll see the Chat Backup option
  
• Click on it and Backup your WhatsApp data
  
• Select the Gmail account where you want the data to be backed up

You can backup the data via Wi-Fi or use mobile data to get it done (as additional data charges apply), where including video content is an option.

Users also get the option to schedule timings for auto backup of their chats.