WhatsApp May Soon Allow Users to Secure Their Chat Backups With Passwords

WhatsApp is known to be a fairly secure platform for communication, thanks to its end-to-end encryption system. Now, the Facebook-owned company is looking to further bolster the security of its eponymous messaging platform by letting users protect their chat backups with a password. The latest WhatsApp beta update adds a new option called “Password protect backups” that will let users protect their chat backups with an additional layer of security. However, the feature is reportedly in the alpha stage of development and might not work as expected for those who have installed the latest beta build.

As per a WABetaInfo report, the latest beta build of WhatsApp (v2.20.66) has added a new option called the ‘Password protect backups' that is disabled by default. The accompanying screenshot does not reveal anything about the new security feature. But it appears that users who install WhatsApp on another device might not be able to restore their chat history if they forget the password to their backup history. Just for your information, WhatsApp saves the chat history backup to Google Drive for Android users in an encrypted form.

The report adds that the ‘Password protect backups' feature is in the alpha stage and might not be functional as described above. We were able to download the latest WhatsApp beta update with the build number v2.20.67 from the Play Store – which appears to be an incremental version of the v2.20.66 mentioned above - and the and v2.20.66 build from APKMirrror, but the new security feature was nowhere to be seen. Unfortunately, it is not clear when this nifty security tool will make its way to end users via the public beta or stable channel.