Just a few days ago, WhatsApp enabled a Multi-device feature for some beta users, expecting to roll out to others… But today, WhatsApp is currently testing backup encryption.
It is no longer news that all messages sent through WhatsApp are encrypted, and now the company wants to extend encryption to your backup. Backups of your chat histories saved to iCloud or Google Drive aren’t encrypted at the moment. Yet this is about to change very soon.
A few days ago, the company rolled out the feature to beta testers of the messaging app. For a short while, it allowed users of the beta to lock their backed-up communications as well as shared media securely behind a password.
The password is entirely private and not shared with any of the services that it passes through, be it WhatsApp, Facebook, Google, or Apple. You can also use a 64-digit encryption key instead of a password if you want, though you’ll never be able to restore your chats if you lose it.
The encryption key can only contain numeric digits and lowercase letters between ‘a’ and ‘f’. If you lose this key, WhatsApp cannot help you to recover it.
At the moment, WhatsApp has rolled out another update that has removed the encryption feature in order to take care of connection issues in the cloud backups.
We are expecting the rollout of the feature in a subsequent update.