Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has announced that instant-messaging app WhatsApp will let users encrypt the chats they decide to back up.
In a post on Facebook, Zuckerberg announced that WhatsApp, which Facebook acquired in 2014 for $19 billion, give users this feature, but did not give a date or timeframe for the rollout.
The facility seems to be available for users of devices that can run Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android.
Zuckerberg wrote on his official account: “We’re adding another layer of privacy and security to WhatsApp: an end-to-end encryption option for the backups people choose to store in Google Drive or iCloud.”
He added: “WhatsApp is the first global messaging service at this scale to offer end-to-end encrypted messaging and backups, and getting there was a really hard technical challenge that required an entirely new framework for key storage and cloud storage across operating systems.”
Read the post here:
WhatsApp has already implemented end-to-end encryption on its platform for existing chats, and gives users a notification in this regard the moment they start individual messaging chains with someone.
Recently, Facebook was accused in a ProPublica report of undermining the privacy of WhatsApp users.
ProPublica has since changed the language in the report to explain that Facebook “examines only messages from threads that have been reported by users as possibly abusive.”
The clarification adds that Facebook “does not break end-to-end encryption.”
