The world’s largest cross-platform messaging service may soon roll out another privacy-focused feature for its billion-plus users across the globe. The service already offers end-to-end encryption by default to all of its users and in the interest of keeping users more secure, a new report suggests that WhatsApp may allow users to protect their chats using passcodes.
End-to-end encryption is good for ensuring that your messages are not intercepted in transit but it serves no purpose should anyone physically gain access to your device. All they would need to do then is open WhatsApp and see who you’ve been chatting with.
To prevent that from happening, we use all kinds of safety features on our phones, including but not limited to passwords, patterns, fingerprints, and even iris scanning with the Galaxy Note 7. Should all those fail for some reason, WhatsApp may provide users with an additional layer of security as far as their messages are concerned.
Android Authority reports that an upcoming WhatsApp update is going to add a passcode feature to the app. This will enable users to assign a six-digit passcode so that local storage of chats on the device can be secured. References to this feature have been found in the code of a WhatsApp translation program which includes strings like “Enter the current six-digit passcode.”
From the looks of it, WhatsApp is currently testing this feature. Just because the feature is being tested doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be released, however, I’m sure many would like it if WhatsApp did release this passcode feature for chats.