WhatsApp introduced Google Drive backup for your chats and media files almost 5 years ago which was a godsend. As you know, WhatsApp is based on your phone and not in the cloud and that is why that feature was important.
Although you can back up your chats and media to Google Drive, those backups are not encrypted. WhatsApp admitted this almost two years ago where they explicitly say that the data you back up on Google drive don’t have end to end encryption. It seems like WhatsApp is working on a way to solve this issue.
According to the WhatsApp tipster WABetaInfo, WhatsApp is working on a possibility to protect your backup on Google Drive.
This feature is on an alpha stage of development which means there is very little information around it.
From the screenshots posted, it will be an option under the chat backup settings named password protect backup. If you enable this and set a password, apparently neither WhatsApp or Google will be able to see the content.
According to the publication, it seems like if you lose that password, you will not be able to restore your chat history. This can be disastrous if you had lots of treasured chats and media you shared with your close friends and family.
This feature is in the early stages of development so we will have to wait for months till it reaches the beta channel first before rolling out to everyone. It will be a step up in security for WhatsApp since the company’s reputation has been hit after the Jeff Bezos hacking story.
