Meta Chief Executive Officer, Mark Zuckerberg on Monday, May 15, announced a new feature on WhatsApp allowing users to lock and hide conversations.
In a statement, Zuckerberg noted that the new Chat Lock feature removed a chat thread from the application’s regular feed and placed it in a new folder that can only be opened through either a password or biometric authentication.
Further, Zuckerberg assured WhatsApp users that the Chat Lock feature would protect intimate conversations as notifications from the chats were hidden.
“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,” the statement read in part.
How it Works
When a user receives a new message in a locked chat, the name of the sender as well as the summary of the message will be hidden. Instead, the feature prompts the user to unlock the chat to view its contents.
This means that users can lock a chat by tapping the name and selecting the Chat Lock option. To reveal the chats, one is required to pull down their inbox and enter their password or biometric data.
One of the concerns raised among the beta testers involved hacking and sharing of passwords used in other applications whereby an individual could automatically click a saved password to access someone’s chats.
Alluding to this, WhatsApp noted that it would add more options for Chat Lock in the coming months, including locking for companion devices as well as creating a custom password for the chats to differentiate from their phone’s.
WhatsApp indicated that the new feature has begun rolling out to Android and iOS users.
The development came weeks after WhatsApp introduced a feature where users could link up to four devices with the same account.
Described as a “One WhatsApp account, now across multiple phones,” one can still access their chats on WhatsApp on another device if the one they are in use is switched off.
If a primary device is inactive for too long, WhatsApp will log them out of all the companion phones.
WhatsApp promised that all the chats media and calls were end-to-end encrypted on every phone.
