A new update for WhatsApp , beta version 2.21.15.5 seems to focus among other things on giving our conversations more privacy since it offers us the opportunity to protect the backup of our chats stored in the cloud even from the police or authorities.
The novelty of WhatsApp that protects your chats even from the police
The messages that we exchange daily on WhatsApp with friends, family and colleagues are encrypted with end-to-end encryption, a technology that prevents them from being read by malicious people even if the data is intercepted during sending or receiving. However, there is a weak link in this protection: chats stored in the cloud , which can be accessed by the authorities with a search warrant. In this way, if the police consider it necessary, they can request Google or Apple to provide the data contained in Drive and iCloud, which also allows access to saved chats. However, with the new WhatsApp beta update , even cloud backups can be protected by encryption.
The news, as is usually the case with almost all beta updates that we discover for WhatsApp, has been advanced by the specialized portal WABetaInfo. According to this page, the beta version 2.21.15.5 for Android has introduced the possibility of protecting the backup copy of chats with an encryption that can only be decrypted by a password chosen by the user or by the 64-digit key provided by WhatsApp. . The danger of this novelty, however, is that if you forget the password or lose the code, it will not be possible to recover the backup , an action that in case of loss of access data cannot be carried out even by the WhatsApp application itself. .
However, once this protection is activated, no one other than the account holder will be able to access this data , not even the authorities in possession of a search warrant and, therefore, will be able to physically access the files stored in the cloud. In this case, only encrypted files that cannot be decrypted without a key would be available. At the moment the novelty is available for the beta version of the application for Android , but it is likely that it will soon also arrive for iPhone users and, finally, also for the entire user with a global launch in the coming months.
📝 WhatsApp beta for Android 2.21.15.5: what’s new?
WhatsApp is finally rolling out end-to-end encrypted backups for beta testers today!https://t.co/Exs95QbHcE
— WABetaInfo (@WABetaInfo) July 16, 2021
