With more than 2.5 billion user-base, WhatsApp is the most used messenger app in the world. One of the compelling reasons for people to love WhatsApp is that it is end-to-end encrypted, meaning the messages, images, and videos shared between two users will remain protected at all times. Though it has made some changes for users who interact with business interaction, the communication between two private individuals remains safeguarded against phone tapping by any entity be it government or private agencies.
However, the protection is provided to data is only during the transfer of information from phone A to B. But, the chat history and multimedia content backed up on phone and cloud storage is still at risk if the user loses his/her handset.
Now, WhatsApp has begun beta testing a new feature that enables the user to protect the backup data. It can only be opened with a password.
The company submitted test version 2.21.15.5 with the encryption feature to the Google Play Beta programme platform, reported WABetaInfo, a WhatsApp community blog.
Interested testers with Android phones can install WhatsApp Beta and offer feedback to the company to remove bugs.
WhatsApp will soon release the beta for the iOS version with cloud backup encryption. Once done with the testing, WhatsApp will roll out the security feature to the public.
With this, users will be less worried about protecting the chat history and multimedia content, which get stored on Google Drive ( default option for Android) and iCloud (default option for iOS) or any other third-party online storage. It will be safeguarded even if the user's email account is compromised and cybercriminals will have to try harder provided the former has used two different passwords for email and cloud data backup.
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