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The mystery of disappearing chats has hit WhatsApp users on Android this month. According to WABetaInfo, a reliable source for information on the messaging app, users have been complaining about messages missing from their chat lists on the app.
Users claimed to have mailed WhatsApp team multiple times, but they haven’t got any credible response from the Facebook-owned social media platform. The issue seems to be limited to Android users, but not confined to phones from a specific brand or model.
It’s possible that with constant app updates, the developer team at WhatsApp could have mistakenly sent out bugs as well, which has somehow deleted a few chats of the users.
Reaching out to the blog, some users shared their concern on Twitter, with many noticing the issue recently.
Interestingly, this topic was first raised back in August 2018, when multiple users reported the issue on XDA Developer forum, which received responses from users from different parts of the world.
We’re not sure if this issue is related to WhatsApp tweaking its chat backup option in 2018. As of 14 November last year, WhatsApp informed that any user who had not backed up their stored data and chats on Google Drive will lose their chat history. However, most of the users complaining of chats missing, are talking about old chats.
The messaging giant also announced that Google Drive’s total storage will not include the space occupied by backed up WhatsApp messages, letting you keep them on the drive for free.
And for those who hadn’t backed up their WhatsApp data on Google Drive, WhatsApp had asked users to backup messages before 12 November, after which the chats were going to be removed. Issues like this confirm the need to backup chats, especially when you’ve got data for two to three years.
Granted, chats saved on Drive lose WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption security, but frankly, how many are really concerned about government entities snooping or accessing conversations?
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)