O WhatsApp announced today on its official blog the arrival of three new security features for your application, which were created to prevent possible account takeovers. According to the messenger, the news will be available “in the coming months”.
The first novelty concerns the resource account protection, made to kick in whenever someone tries to transfer a WhatsApp account to another device. According to the service, from now on, the user will have to confirm the action on his old device before proceeding with the transfer. The idea is precisely to prevent an unauthorized transfer of the account.
A device check, in turn, seeks to protect messenger users from possible malware capable of invading accounts and sending unwanted messages to their contacts. According to the announcement, the user will not need to activate this feature or interact with any alerts for it to work, as it will work at all times in the background.
More specifically, the feature will use a security token that is stored on the user’s device to verify that the client trying to connect to WhatsApp’s servers to send a message is the same version used by the account owner, and not another one. device. This protection uses the app’s end-to-end encryption to work.
The third and last feature announced by the Meta messenger is regarding the automatic security codes. This novelty allows the user to verify that a connection is secure through a process called “Essential Transparency”, which can be found in the “Encryption” tab. According to WhatsApp, it is possible to “immediately verify that your personal conversation is secure”.
WhatsApp also took advantage of the announcement to reinforce the importance of other existing security features such as two step verification and the end-to-end encrypted backups.
via WABetaInfo
