Recently,
Facebook-owned
WhatsApp has been on the hook for privacy and data tracking concerns. While the company is
not backing down on the new policy, it is implementing new features which help with other concerns, such as cloud backups. At present, users can backup their conversations to the cloud, but they are not encrypted. This may be changing soon.
Though we do not yet have an official announcement from WhatsApp, app beta-tester @WABetaInfo on Twitter has posted screenshots of the possible new feature for both
Android and
iOS. In both mobile OSs, a phone number and password are required to encrypt the data sent to the cloud. Moreover, the password will not be sent to WhatsApp and will remain private to the user, so the data is secure as the password is without any other concerns.
On the other hand, if you manage to lose the password or plug it in wrong too many times, your data will likely be lost to the void forever without any way of recovery. At present, cloud backups save unencrypted chats to Google Drive or iCloud, and if they are hacked, anyone can get the chat messages. Thus, while the chance of losing chats entirely is concerning, having them stolen is worse by most accounts.
When the feature is released sometime in the future, it would not be surprising to have both options for backing chats up to the cloud. Which option would you choose? Let us know what you think of this possible new feature in the comments below.