WhatsApp has quietly added Encryption for messages that are backed up on Apple’s iCloud, in an attempt to safeguard users’ chat logs from being accessed from the Cloud Storage in a readable form.
WhatsApp is already offering end-to-end encryption over its Messaging service for a while now and the encryption was not applied to iClouds backups of messages. There is no doubt that Apple’s iCloud service is well encrypted, but if someone is able to break in the cloud service, which many has in the past, hackers will get the entire communication history of the users.
So, in order to rule out this possibility, WhatsApp has added encryption before backing up files to the cloud. “When a user backs up their chats through WhatsApp to iCloud, the backup files are sent encrypted,” a WhatsApp spokesperson told Forbes, confirming the change. However, little is known whether the company has added this feature for Android users or not.
Meanwhile, WhatsApp Messenger is also said to be testing a new ‘Change Number’ feature where a user can change his mobile number and the App will automatically notify all the contacts. Further, the Live Location sharing feature is touted to make its way to WhatsApp as well. Not only this, a recent leak from WABetainfo also claimed that the Chat Messenger may soon bring the ‘unsend’ option which will let users revoke sent messages in a brief window.