In this article, we’ll tell you how end-to-end encryption will work for our WhatsApp backups. The world’s most widely used instant messaging application is going to update its encryption options so that no hacker can access your conversations, not even through your local files.
How end-to-end encryption will work for our WhatsApp backups?
In a fully computerized and connected world, cybersecurity is the most important pillar if we don’t want society to collapse under its full weight.
For this reason, all the tools we use every day use security protocols, encryption, and authentication. And yet hackers often circumvent these measures.
And while it’s hard to know that we will never be fully protected, efforts to make the Internet as secure as possible should not falter.
WhatsApp, one of the applications we all use, is clear about this (despite having its own pace when it comes to updating) and this is why it is taken for granted that it is working on end-to-end encryption that will protect our local backups.
After introducing end-to-end encryption in 2014 for private conversations, and also encrypting the backups we stored in the Google and Apple clouds, the time has come for our smartphone backups to also enjoy this security.
End-to-end encryption will prevent unauthorized access to your chat history and images, and to activate it WhatsApp will ask us to set a password that encrypts local and cloud backups.
🆕 WhatsApp is also working to bring end-to-end encrypted LOCAL backups on WhatsApp beta for Android!
They were working on E2EE backups on Google Drive, but they will extend the feature for local backups as well.This feature will be available in a future update. pic.twitter.com/2YbulmqiUQ
— WABetaInfo (@WABetaInfo) August 3, 2021
Once this is done, the next time we restore our WhatsApp from Google Drive or a local backup, we will need to enter the password/encryption key.
But a warning, if we lose the phone and forget the key/password, we will not be able to restore our backup and WhatsApp will not be able to help us, since this security measure is completely private and is not shared with WhatsApp, Google or Apple.
Right now this option has only reached a few users and is in trial period, but the idea is that in the coming weeks WhatsApp will release an update with this new security feature.
