San Francisco: Facebook-owned WhatsApp is reportedly testing a technology to independently encrypt chat backups in the Cloud, which has been enabled in its most recent Android beta update.
“After releasing the multi-device beta programme for more beta testers, WhatsApp is finally enabling another important feature — the possibility to encrypt your backups,” Webetainfo reported.
“What does it mean? Encrypting your backups protects your chat history and media from unauthorised access,” it added.
The report also explained how encryption works.
“You need to choose a password that will be used to encrypt your future backups. It’s always needed to insert the password when you restore a backup, otherwise you won’t be able to restore your chat history,” the report said.
“This password is private and it’s not shared with WhatsApp, Facebook, Google or Apple,” it added.
End-to-end encrypted backups also support an encryption key that can be used to restore your password.
It can only contain numeric digits and lowercase letters between ‘a’ and ‘f’. If you lose this key, WhatsApp cannot help you recover it.
WhatsApp has just submitted a new update through the Google Play Beta Programme, bringing the version up to 2.21.15.5.
IANS