Encrypted end-to-end backups on WhatsApp

October 30, 2021 Off By Rowena Cletus

WhatsApp believes that what you share with your friends and family stays between you. More than two billion users send and receive 100 billion messages a day using end-to-end encryption, which is a feature that was added five years ago to safeguard user privacy.

Though end-to-end encrypted messages are stored on your device, many people would also like to have a backup in the event that their device is lost or stolen. WhatsApp is launching today an extra, optional layer of security that protects backups to Google Drive and iCloud with encryption from end-to-end. With this, WhatsApp says that no other global messaging service provides this level of security for the messages, media, voice messages, and video calls.

With an end-to-end encrypted backup, you are now able to secure it with a password of your choice or with a 64-digit encryption key you know only. WhatsApp or your backup provider will not be able to read your backups or gain access to the code required to unlock them.

As of today, WhatsApp has more than 2 billion users. Users with the latest version of the app will be able to access this feature gradually. For more information about how you can protect your chat backups with end-to-end encryption on iOS and Android, or how we built it, please see here.