A New Feature, Back-Ups of Whatsapp Messages on Google Drive for Free, can Invite Hackers

It may soon be possible for hackers to gain access to people's videos, images and text messages from WhatsApp. This is the most current security alert following the app that Facebook owns declared it would begin making back-ups of end-users' contents on Google Drive without charging a fee.

Albeit WhatsApp safeguards every message, document, video and image, which an end-user may send over the platform, using end-to-end encryption, such a security would stop if the person chooses making his contents' back-ups on Google Drive that would make them vulnerable to hacking attacks.

However, it's been considerable time that WhatsApp has been letting end-users save their missives inside Google Drive. All those back-ups thus far were within their limited storage capacities with Google Drive. But, WhatsApp has just declared one partnership with Google wherein back-ups won't any more get counted in Google Drive's grant. The rule thus opens anyone to exploit the feature making increasing number of end-users potentially exposed.

Previously during September, WhatsApp declared that people may create back-ups of their conversation records in Google Drive at no monetary expense and devoid of affecting those people's storage quota. The announcement will take effect from 12th November when people having plentiful saved data inside WhatsApp would be able to back-up their earlier messages for free.

But the practice unfolds potential problems. The Electronic Frontier Foundation a no-profit-no-loss privacy watchdog cautioned people not to create their messages' back-ups for storage on the cloud as it'd serve unencrypted replicas of the missives to company providing the cloud. That one's communications remain perfectly security, it's necessary that the person chatting from the other end also does the same.

According to FAQ section on WhatsApp website, there's no encryption of back-ups. The end-to-end encryption of WhatsApp doesn't protect back-ups of messages and media that are on Google Drive. That implies Google can access those data. It could also imply that hackers may intercept the unencrypted content by acquiring admission into the Google Drive account of a victim. So to maintain security and privacy, the alternative back-up procedure can be saving WhatsApp conversations on a PC's hard drive that's encrypted.

» SPAMfighter News - 9/11/2018