WhatsApp, the Facebook -owned messaging platform, is one of the world’s most popular apps – but are your messages safe?
Everyday more than one billion people use the chat to send more than 65 billion messages per day.
When you’re sending messages to friends in WhatsApp, you may feel quite safe.
It’s not like you’re posting the messages on a forum for everyone to see, right?
But like most apps, WhatsApp is not free of security concerns.
Here are four tips to stop people being able to snoop on your messages including setting up security checks on logging onto your account.
Enable up two-step verification
WhatsApp lets you set up a system which adds another layer of security to your account.
When you have two-step verification enabled, if someone tries to verify your phone number they need a six digit pin.
In order to set up this, go onto Settings, followed by Account and then Two-step verification.
Here you can enable the feature, and select a six digit pin.
Turn off Read Receipts
Read receipts are check marks which appear next to a message you send.
It shows if a message was successfully sent, delivered and read.
To turn this function off, go to Settings, followed by Account and Privacy, where you can turn off Read receipts.
This is useful if you don’t want people to know whether you have read their message.
Use Face lock
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WhatsApp has another layer of security called Face ID, which means you can only unlock the app with your own face.
To turn this function on, go to Settings, followed by Privacy and then Screen Lock.
Here you can turn on the Require Face ID toggle.
Bear in mind that you can still reply to messages from notifications, and answer calls if WhatsApp is locked.
Make your encryption secure
As far as messaging apps go, WhatsApp is already quite safe and encrypted.
So only you and the people you are messaging should be able to see the conversation, unless they screenshot it.
But if you back up your chats using the cloud they won’t be as protected.
Law enforcement have the ability to ask Google or Apple for your chats, or a hacker could access it.
You can turn off cloud backup by going into your Settings, followed by Chats, Chat Backup, and turning off Auto Backup.
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