WhatsApp has never been on the list of instant messaging services considered the most privacy protectors. This is logical and we have already commented on it on previous occasions, and it is that for many years, probably due to the insouciance of being the leading service in its market, those responsible hardly worked to provide it with new functions, while its main competitors did. that stepped on the accelerator in that sense, and not only in terms of privacy, but also in the addition of new (and in many cases expected) functions. However, a couple of years ago this began to change substantially..
The most recent example of this can be found in the deployment, a few weeks ago, of the expected “companion mode”, which is the name that Meta has given to the function that, finally, allows the same WhatsApp account to be used in two or more smartphones, thus completing the synchronization function on various devices, launched in November 2021. More recently, we have learned that the company tests a direct transfer mode (without going through the cloud) of history between networked devices local, which also tests the transcription of the audio notes, which has deployed the beta version for WhatsApp web and that there is already a beta version for Wear OS. They are certainly working hard.
Among these new features, At the beginning of last month we told you about a function, which they were starting to test, and that would make it possible to protect certain conversations from the eyes of others, using either a password or the biometric identification system of the device in which we use the service. Undoubtedly, the level of privacy provided by a function like this raises the overall rating of the service by many integers.
Well, when only a little over a month has passed since this function was detected, in tests, for the first time, it is already official. As we can read on the official Meta blog, WhatsApp has already started the deployment of Chat Lock, the function that allows you to protect conversations. As we can read in said publication, from now on users will have a folder in which they can save the conversations they want to protect.
In this first phase of its implementation, it seems that Chat Lock will use the PIN configured on the device on which we are using WhatsApp, but future plans include the possibility of use a separate keyso that even if someone has access to the content of our devices, they cannot access those conversations unless they have the specific unlock key for them.
In addition, as we can read, when a conversation is in said folder additional information about it will not be displayed in notifications (such as username and message content). Certainly, it must be recognized that, at this point, it seems that they have done a good job, something that is worth celebrating.
