Learn How WhatsApp's Chat Lock Feature Keeps Your Secrets Safer Than Fort Knox

Discover how Meta Platforms Inc.’s META instant messaging platform, WhatsApp’s Chat Lock feature, transforms your messaging privacy, offering the ultimate protection for online conversations on the platform. 

What Happened: On Monday, WhatsApp rolled out a new security feature called “Chat Lock” to enhance the privacy and protection of users’ personal conversations. 

With the added layer of security, the popular messaging platform has expanded its array of privacy tools, including end-to-end encryption, encrypted backups, disappearing messages, screenshot prevention and control over online status visibility and last seen. 

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What Happens When A Chat Is Locked: The new Chat Lock features allow users to lock specific chats and move them to a separate folder accessible only through the device’s password or biometric authentication, such as a fingerprint. Furthermore, it ensures that the content of locked chats remains hidden even in notifications. 

The latest features are particularly useful for users who occasionally share their phones with family members or find themselves in situations where someone else may handle their device when important or confidential messages arrive. 

How To Lock And Then Access The Chat: Locking a chat is as simple as tapping the name of a one-to-one or group conversation and selecting the lock option. Here’s a two-step guide for users: 

Step I: Go to the chat you wish to lock and tap on the profile picture. 

Step II: Find the “Chat Lock” option and activate it by toggling the feature to on. 

To access locked chats, users can gently pull down their inbox, prompting them to enter their phone password or utilize biometric authentication. 

“Over the next few months we’re going to be adding more options for Chat Lock, including locking for companion devices and creating a custom password for your chats so that you can use a unique password different from the one you use for your phone,” the platform stated in a blogpost. 

Why It’s Important: Last week, a Twitter engineer alleged that WhatsApp was spying on him via his smartphone’s microphone. Elon Musk later reacted to his post, saying, “WhatsApp cannot be trusted.”

The instant messaging platform eventually stated that the complaint arose because of a bug on Android that misattributed information in their Privacy Dashboard. 

In October last year, Telegram founder Pavel Durov said that he deleted Meta’s app from his device “years ago” because it has been a “surveillance tool for 13 years.”

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