WhatsApp begins rolling out end-to-end encryption for chat backups
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San Francisco: Leaking chats will not be easy anymore as WhatsApp on Thursday started rolling out end-to-end encryption for backups stored on Google Drive and iCloud. The rollout has started months after the Facebook-owned company tested the update internally.
Last month, WhatsApp announced that it would start rolling out end-to-end encrypted cloud backups for Android and iOS users. The opt-in feature will help users protect their backups from being accessed by third parties including cloud storage providers such as Google and Apple. It is also claimed to protect chat history stored in backups from WhatsApp.
Neither WhatsApp nor the backup service provider will be able to access their end-to-end encryption backup.
"With end-to-end encrypted backups, no other messaging service at WhatsApp's scale will provide this level of security for people's messages -- from sending and transit, to receiving and storing in the cloud," the company said in a post.
The feature will be rolling out "slowly" for people on the latest version of the app.
Once the feature rolls out, open WhatsApp, go to Settings > Chats > Chat Backups > End-to-End Encrypted Backup, and then follow the prompts.
One can now secure their end-to-end encrypted backup with either a password of their choice or a 64-digit encryption key which means that no one else but only the user will be able to access the backup.
"This feature will provide people with more privacy and security for their digital conversations and that's a responsibility that we don't take lightly. Given this, we are rolling this out slowly to ensure a consistent and reliable user experience for people on iOS and Android around the world," the company added.