WhatsApp Announces End-To-End Encryption For Chat Backups, Privacy. Roll Out Soon For Android, iOS Users

The company said that it is a really big privacy advancement, particularly at our scale of more than 2 billion users who send more than 100 billion messages a day.

(Representative Image/Getty)

New Delhi: Instant messaging app WhatsApp has announced another layer of privacy and security - an end-to-end encryption option for the backups people choose to store in Google Drive or iCloud.

The announcement was made by Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook claimed that with end-to-end encrypted backups, no other messaging service at WhatsApp's scale will provide this level of security for people's messages.

"For those curious about how we made this work, we’ve published a white paper and engineering blog with all the technical details for the security community to check out," Zuckerberg said in the comment section of his Facebook post.

"We are announcing this now to provide the broader technical community with our approach before it's available to our beta testers and eventually everyday users," the company said in a statement.

"In the coming weeks, we will be adding end-to-end encrypted backups as an additional layer of security for those who want it," the statement read further.

As per the new update, if a user chooses to back up his/her chat history with end-to-end encryption, it will be accessible only to them, and no one will be able to unlock their backup, not even WhatsApp.

The social media giant further said that it is a really big privacy advancement, particularly at our scale of more than 2 billion users who send more than 100 billion messages a day.

"We believe that this will give our users a meaningful advancement in the safety of their personal messages," it added.

According to the statement, the company will be releasing this as an optional feature and in the coming weeks it will be rolling this out to iOS and Android users.

Additionally, WhatsApp is also working on other privacy features too - one of which provides users an option to hide their online status from anyone who can't be trusted.