WhatsApp could soon introduce an exciting feature that will let you protect your chats with a six-digit passcode.
Facebook-owned WhatsApp is undoubtedly the most popular messaging app. Despite the ongoing controversy with its privacy policies, WhatsApp is still considered amongst the secure messaging platforms thanks to its end-to-end encryption. Now it looks like WhatsApp is working on further improving the security by reportedly adding a feature that lets you protect your chats with a six-digit passcode.
The upcoming feature was spotted by Android Authority on a text translation program for WhatsApp. The text translation program was to convert text from English to Dutch. The phrases which were in the translation program included “Enter the current six-digit passcode:”, “Passcodes don’t match. Try again,” and also “Enter a recovery email address”. With regards to the recovery mail option, there was another set of translation texts which suggested that the use of recovery email will be optional for WhatsApp users. Recovery emails usually help when it comes to forgetting passwords and or when locked out of one’s account completely. But this suggestion means that users can provide a recovery email address if they wish to. For those who do not provide and face any issue with the passcode, they could be locked out of their WhatsApp account permanently. But since WhatsApp accounts are linked to phone numbers, the question of one’s WhatsApp account being permanently locked remains doubtful.
Also, there has been no suggestion as to whether the six-digit passcode feature would be mandatory or optional. WhatsApp hasn’t released any official statement regarding this feature so we cannot confirm the six-digit passcode feature would be rolled out eventually to its users or not. Nonetheless, this sounds like an interesting feature, which will be welcomed by many who like to keep their chats away from prying eyes. ALSO READ: Edward Snowden warns against Google Allo, says WhatsApp, Signal are safer
WhatsApp has recently been under the spotlight for its new privacy policy that lets the messaging platform share users’ numbers with parent company Facebook. Citing reasons of business prospects, WhatsApp would be sharing its users’ account information but has cleared that it will not misuse the phone number and the chats would remain private. Although there is an option to opt out from this, there have been cases of people filing petition against WhatsApp for its new policy. There is an ongoing plea in Delhi HC regarding this. WhatsApp has also been threatened with legal action by a German organization if they go ahead with this policy.