After testing encrypted cloud chat backups last month, WABetainfo has now found that the company is going to extend the end-to-end security to locally stored backups as well.
WhatsApp is also working to bring end-to-end encrypted LOCAL backups on WhatsApp beta for Android! They were working on E2EE backups on Google Drive, but they will extend the feature for local backups as well.This feature will be available in a future update. pic.twitter.com/2YbulmqiUQ — WABetaInfo (@WABetaInfo) August 3, 2021
The way it works is WhatsApp will encrypt your locally stored chats with a password that you provide. You can opt to generate a 64-bit encryption key instead of a password as well. When you switch phones or reinstall WhatsApp, the service will then ask you for a password or the key to restoring the chats.
The catch is if you forget the password or lose your encryption key, you won't be able to restore old chats. This is because Facebook or WhatsApp do not have access to your passwords and your keys are generated randomly, without the knowledge of anyone else but you.
The feature is still in beta and has not seen a global rollout as of yet. There are no announcements or dates for a wider release as of yet.
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