If you are one of the hundreds of millions of people that end up using WhatsApp on a regular basis then you would know that the messaging service has been providing end to end encryption for quite some time now. This means that the only people that would be able to read the messages that are being sent would be you and the person that receives the message, and no other device would be able to access these messages even if you set up your WhatsApp account on them.
This is why when you switch to a new phone, you probably won’t have any of your WhatsApp history to look into. That is, unless you backed your chat history up to Apple iCloud. WhatsApp encourages users to do this so that they can get all of their message history back when they change phones, but there is a serious security threat that is associated with this sort of thing. Basically, any messages or media you sent over WhatsApp that would be stored on iCloud would no longer get the kind of end to end encryption that you might assume you would be able to access once all has been said and is now out of the way.
This is because of the fact that Apple can access data in the cloud, and in spite of the fact that the tech company would only end up doing this if some kind of law enforcement organization with a legitimate warrant wanted to access your messages as part of an investigation, chances are that you won’t feel as safe as you used to in terms of message encryption.
An important thing to note here is that iMessage had the same problem as well, but Apple fixed it. Now you can link a few devices and you would be able to end up accessing your iMessage history through any of these devices. The key difference here is that no one would be able to access these messages but you. This shows a serious flaw in cloud based data storage, one that makes it rather unsuitable for private messages and media.
This is why when you switch to a new phone, you probably won’t have any of your WhatsApp history to look into. That is, unless you backed your chat history up to Apple iCloud. WhatsApp encourages users to do this so that they can get all of their message history back when they change phones, but there is a serious security threat that is associated with this sort of thing. Basically, any messages or media you sent over WhatsApp that would be stored on iCloud would no longer get the kind of end to end encryption that you might assume you would be able to access once all has been said and is now out of the way.
This is because of the fact that Apple can access data in the cloud, and in spite of the fact that the tech company would only end up doing this if some kind of law enforcement organization with a legitimate warrant wanted to access your messages as part of an investigation, chances are that you won’t feel as safe as you used to in terms of message encryption.
An important thing to note here is that iMessage had the same problem as well, but Apple fixed it. Now you can link a few devices and you would be able to end up accessing your iMessage history through any of these devices. The key difference here is that no one would be able to access these messages but you. This shows a serious flaw in cloud based data storage, one that makes it rather unsuitable for private messages and media.
Screenshot: @insomniac1337
