It seems that WhatsApp is getting more and more serious about privacy and encryption post its fiasco back in early 2021, as, it seems that the company will soon offer end-to-end encryption for local backups, leading to better security of chat data, even when it comes to backing them up.
This comes after WhatsApp had stated earlier that it would offer end to end encryption on chat backups that would be synced to Google Drive.
Today, however, a post via WABetaInfo has revealed that WhatsApp will be bringing the same for local backups of chats as well. This move is quite welcome since any bit of encryption is appreciated in today's day and age.
WhatsApp Could Soon Allow End-To-End Encryption for Local Backups
As per the post by WABetaInfo on Twitter, this feature has been doing the rounds on WhatsApp Beta for Android, with the shared screenshot showing that within the chat backup page, WhatsApp will show the time for the last backup and whether or not the same was end-to-end encrypted or not.
Underneath this, there is an option for the user to create a new backup for their chats, with the option to turn on end-to-end encryption, providing the size of the backup as well. There also seems to be an option to choose whether or not to encrypt the backup, which provides the user with an option.
You might think that the option to choose encryption of local backups would be one that most would use, but, there is an increase in overall file size, which could lead to consumption of more space, giving this option should then allow the user to back their data up without reducing their storage space.
In case you missed it, this news come after WhatsApp started rolling out a feature that has been much loved on competitor Snapchat. This feature, dubbed View Once lets photos and videos disappear after they have been opened.
Facebook, in a blog post, stated that once the media content is viewed, there will be a message stating that it had been opened. This is pretty similar to Snapchat, which allows users to make their updates disappear after a span of 24 hours.
Overall, it seems that WhatsApp is working towards ensuring better privacy and availability of features to the end-users so as to not lose out users to competitors such as Telegram and Signal, both of which have stepped up their game in the last couple of months.
