WhatsApp Backups Is Not Encrypted For Android Users, What Should You Do?
Dhir Acharya
It’s common sense that you back up your WhatsApp data, work files and chat history. But this is really risky for Android users. Here's why and what to do.
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It’s common sense that you back up your data, from work files to chat history, regardless of whether they are relevant or not, just in case. So, a lot of WhatsApp users back up their conversations, which is stored in Google Drive. While there’s no problem with storage when you do this, the real issue is that the backups are probably not secured because they will lose the end-to-end encryption. Meanwhile, iOS users back up their chats on iCloud, keeping them encrypted.
Therefore, next time, if you want to back up your data on WhatsApp, think carefully as it won’t be encrypted anymore. This flaw is among the biggest weaknesses in the end-to-end environment of WhatsApp on Android.
However, the popular messaging platform is working on encryption got chat backups on Google Drive. Android users will soon be able to protect their conversations with a password on Drive. But there hasn’t been a timeline for this improvement yet so we don’t know when that capability will arrive.
WABeta Info revealed that the new security feature is currently in an alpha phase of development, so there’s not really anything to showcase right now. Essentially, the feature will let users encrypt their backups with a password, meaning nobody except for that user can see the content.
At the same time, you can disable the auto chat backup option in iCloud or Google Drive. Instead, you can manually export just the chats you want. This way would be useful for important or confidential chats. Besides, you can choose to disable the option of automatically adding all WhatsApp media files to the gallery on your phone to save the memory on the device.