WhatsApp has announced the implementation of a new feature, allowing users to hide sensitive conversations in a special folder.
Named “Chat Lock”, users will be able to take a chat thread out of their regular inbox and place it in a separate folder which is only accessible with a password or biometric, like face recognition or fingerprint. Moreover, once a conversation has been locked, notifications from that particular chat will be silenced, so users can rest assured there is no more risk of other people seeing private information pop-up on their screens.
We believe this feature will be great for people who share their phones from time to time with a family member, or in moments where someone else is holding your phone at the exact moment an extra-special chat arrives.
Meta
Conversations can be locked by tapping the name of the one-to-one or group and selecting the lock option. The hidden folder and locked chats can be accessed by slowly pulling down on the inbox page and then entering the selected password or biometric.
The feature started rolling out globally on 15 May, with additional options to come over the next few months, including locks for companion devices and creating a custom password for the locked folder so that users can have a unique password different from their phone’s.
While having the possibility of hiding conversations is a welcomed additional privacy layer, the new feature might put the app even more at odds with UK legislators. WhatsApp might stop being available in the UK as legislators’ and tech companies’ diverging views clash over a new safety bill. The Online Safety Bill, originally proposed by Boris Johnson, is currently being examined by the British Parliament, and it could force applications to disclose exchanges for potential terrorist or child pornography content. So far WhatsApp has remained reluctant to consider any changes to the way messages are exchanged on its platform, even if that could mean risking a ban in the UK.
WhatsApp uses end-to-end encryption by default in all conversations. This means that only the participants in an exchange can access it. “We support strong encryption, but this cannot come at the cost of public safety,” a Home Office spokesperson said, according to The Guardian. “Tech companies have a moral duty to ensure they are not blinding themselves and law enforcement to the unprecedented levels of child sexual abuse on their platforms. The online safety bill in no way represents a ban on end-to-end encryption, nor will it require services to weaken encryption.”
The head of WhatsApp at parent company Meta, Will Cathcart, told The Independent that he does not intend to degrade its current system. He said he was shocked that this proposal could harm the privacy protection implemented by WhatsApp. According to him, such requests have only come from “governments that were trying to suppress the ability of their citizens to communicate freely”.
“The bill provides no explicit protection for encryption,” said a coalition of providers, including the market leaders WhatsApp and Signal, in an open letter last month, as reported by The Guardian. “If implemented as written, could empower Ofcom to try to force the proactive scanning of private messages on end-to-end encrypted communication services, nullifying the purpose of end-to-end encryption as a result and compromising the privacy of all users.”
WhatsApp emphasizes that weakening end-to-end encryption could not be done locally. Such an implementation in the UK would have to be applied in the same way worldwide. “When a liberal democracy asks whether it is acceptable to scan everyone’s private communications for illegal content, it prompts countries around the world, which have very different definitions of illegal content, to propose the same thing,” Cathcart told The Independent.
