WHATSAPP has made a huge change that’s perfect for blocking other people from reading your texts.
If you’re worried about being spied on, it’s now extremely easy to lock down your chats.
Meta, which owns WhatsApp, has made it much simpler to close down a security hole that’s very easy to miss.
When you send a message on WhatsApp, it’s scrambled in transit. This is called encryption.
It means that only you and the recipient have the right keys that unlock the text to unscramble it.
If someone intercepted the message as it was moving between your phones, they’d just see a garbled mess that made no sense.
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In fact, even WhatsApp can’t read those texts because it doesn’t have the keys.
And if a hacker breaks in – or the police demand your texts – the messages would still be scrambled.
BACK IT UP
But if you back-up your text messages to the cloud so that you can restore them in the future, those copies might not be encrypted.
A few years ago, WhatsApp began offering users the option to encrypt their back-ups.
But turning it on involved using a password – which cyber-experts often warn are insecure – or storing a 64-digit key somewhere.
Now, WhatsApp has made it significantly easier and safer by adding passkey-encrypted backups.
Passkeys are designed to be a replacement for passwords, and let you authenticate yourself using your smartphone.
So that means you’d scan your face with the iPhone’s Face ID, or use a fingerprint scanner.
Due to this design, passkeys can’t be guessed or leaked like passwords.
And they’re far easier to use than the 64-digit key that WhatsApp was previously offering.
PASSKEY PARADISE
Here’s Google’s Sampath Srinivas official explanation for Passkeys…
“When you sign into a website or app on your phone, you will simply unlock your phone — your account won’t need a password anymore,” Sampath explained.
“Instead, your phone will store a FIDO credential called a passkey which is used to unlock your online account.
“The passkey makes signing in far more secure, as it’s based on public key cryptography and is only shown to your online account when you unlock your phone.
“To sign into a website on your computer, you’ll just need your phone nearby and you’ll simply be prompted to unlock it for access.
“Once you’ve done this, you won’t need your phone again and you can sign in by just unlocking your computer.
“Even if you lose your phone, your passkeys will securely sync to your new phone from cloud backup, allowing you to pick up right where your old device left off.”
Picture Credit: Google
“Many of us carry years of precious memories in our WhatsApp chats – photos, heartfelt voice notes, and important conversations,” WhatsApp explained.
“That’s why protecting them if you ever lose your phone or need to transfer to a new device is so important.”
The company added: “Now, with just a tap or a glance, the same security that protects your personal chats and calls on WhatsApp is applied to your chat backups so they are always safe, accessible and private.”
WhatsApp says that the feature will start rolling out over the coming weeks and months.
So don’t worry if you don’t see it on your phone right away.
To find it, you’ll want to get to Settings > Chats > Chat Backup > End-to-End Encrypted Backup.
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Then you can turn encrypted back-ups on and use a passkey to protect them.
That way, if a stranger wanted to spy on the saved copies of your chats, they wouldn’t be able to.
