Facebook-owned WhatsApp said on Friday that it will soon roll out end-to-end encryption (E2EE) on cloud backups.
“We are announcing this to provide an approach to the wider tech community before it becomes available to beta testers and ultimately everyday users,” the company said in a statement.
“In the coming weeks, we plan to add end-to-end encrypted backups as an additional layer of security for those who need it,” the company added.
If someone chooses to back up their chat history with end-to-end encryption, that chat history will only be accessible to that person and no one will be able to unlock the backup, even WhatsApp.
“This is a huge privacy advance, especially at the scale of more than 2 billion users who send more than 100 billion messages a day,” the company said.
“I’m confident that this will greatly improve the security of your personal messages,” he added.
The company plans to release it as an optional feature and roll it out to iOS and Android users in the coming weeks.
WhatsApp is reportedly working on other privacy features as well.
Recently, WhatsApp has been reported to allow users to hide their online status from untrusted people.
Currently, “Last Seen”, “Profile Photo”, and “Summary” are not visible to everyone, contacts, or anyone. According to the report, there are no customizable options.
