WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption rendered useless on using crucial built-in feature

There are more than 1.5 billion users around the world who regularly use WhatsApp as their primary means of communication, which makes WhatsApp the world's largest instant messaging app. In India alone, there are over 200 million monthly active users, who find the app not only convenient to use but completely secure.

WhatsApp boasts highly about its end-to-end encryption on all messages and media shared between users on the platform, which keeps third-party snooping at bay to such an extent that the Indian government raised concerns and asked the platform to offer traceability for messages. Instead of granting back-door access to any or all information about WhatsApp messages, the company introduced several features to curb spam and fake news, which led to appalling violence in the country.

But the feature WhatsApp takes immense pride in, its end-to-end encryption, does not work for messages backed up using Google Drive. The company updated its site, saying "Media and messages you back up aren't protected by WhatsApp end-to-end encryption while in Google Drive."

The update comes shortly after WhatsApp signed a pact with Google, which allows users to back up any amount of data on Google Drive without any quota from November 12. Previously, the data backed up on the internet search titan's cloud storage service was used against users' 15GB free space allotted with every free Google account.

Sai Krishna Kothapalli, an independent security researcher, noted that backing up chats using Google Drive is an optional feature and WhatsApp doesn't force its users to do so. But backing up data using Google Drive is the most convenient method to store important chats, especially when a user wants to change devices.

"From a privacy perspective (completely discounting convenience) online backups are no good regardless of who the custodian is. While Google does encrypt files on the server side they also ultimately control the keys for those -- which can be provided to law enforcement authorities on the basis of a warrant," Karan Saini, independent security researcher, was quoted as saying by the Economic Times.

WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption provides complete security to users and the messages shared on the platform. According to the company, when a user sends a message on WhatsApp, only the recipient of the message can read it and even WhatsApp or any third parties cannot access those messages.

But the concern strikes when the backup takes place. Kothapalli said that messages are decrypted on the phone before they are sent to drive as a backup. So it all comes down to whether or not you trust Google on storing your WhatsApp messages as a backup, which the web giant says will be automatically removed from storage if not updated in more than a year.