WhatsApp will permit customers to lock and conceal conversations, Meta pronounces

WhatsApp customers will quickly be capable to lock and conceal conversations, due to a brand new characteristic.

Chat Lock will take away a chat thread from the app’s common onscreen inbox and place it into a brand new folder that may solely be opened by a password or biometric, comparable to facial recognition or a fingerprint.

Calling it “one more layer of security”, Meta – WhatsApp’s mother or father firm – added Chat Lock will shield “your most intimate conversations” and conceal notifications from them.

It’s the newest in an inventory of rising options on the globally-used, encrypted messaging service which puts it at odds with the UK authorities’s on-line security invoice.

Read extra: Why the Online Safety Bill is proving so controversial

Meta has criticised the invoice, together with different corporations.

It says the legislation change would undermine end-to-end encryption – a degree of safety for messages which implies no person apart from the customers concerned within the dialog is ready to see its content material.

The firm has beforehand warned it would sooner see British users stopped from using its services than risk compromising their privacy.

The authorities has insisted it will not outlaw end-to-end encryption.

It says the net security invoice will retain privateness whereas enhancing protections for youngsters’s security.

Charities, together with the NSPCC, assist the invoice, the federal government added.

As a part of its privateness package deal, Meta permits WhatsApp customers to encrypt their backups, block the power to screenshot and make their messages disappear robotically.

Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief government officer, confirmed the brand new characteristic in a Facebook put up.

He mentioned: “New locked chats in WhatsApp make your conversations more private. They’re hidden in a password protected folder and notifications won’t show sender or message content.”