Even a few months ago, messaging giant WhatsApp was on the verge of a mass boycott. With the service promising to share data directly with its parent company, Facebook, many users had already started looking at alternatives like Telegram and Signal. Now, in July 2021, WhatsApp has promised to scale back on sharing and is focusing more on serving its users as best as possible, which we think is paying off. WhatsApp recently introduced multi-device support, allowing companion apps to work across desktop, web, and other devices, even without the main smartphone accompanying them. With multi-device support out of the way, WhatsApp is now focusing on improving the security and reliability of its cross-platform application. And it’s doing so by making chat backups safer than ever. Today, we’ll take a look at what the feature entails and tell you how you can use it to set a password for your WhatsApp backups.

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As you may already know, your chats and calls on WhatsApp are End-to-End Encrypted, which is widely considered as the gold standard for security in messaging and data transfer. Thanks to E2EE, no one but you, not even the authorities, would have access to your data. This simply means that prying eyes would never get their hands on you. WhatsApp backups didn’t get the same treatment before the update. They were pretty secure on their own, but not as neat as E2EE. With this new update, even your WhatsApp backups would be End-to-End Encrypted, ensuring top-to-bottom protection.

The feature is currently in testing, just like the multi-device system that WhatsApp introduced a few days ago. You will need WhatsApp beta version 2.21. 15.5 to use this feature. The best way to get the beta version is via Google Play Store or Apple App Store.