Whatsapp update: This is what’s behind the new lock symbol

Security
Whatsapp update: This is what’s behind the new lock symbol

Meta is constantly improving its WhatsApp messenger in detail. But not everyone is self-explanatory – like the new lock symbol in chats. Here you can find out what’s behind it.

Billions of people use WhatsApp every day – and yet don’t know many of its functions. This is also because the operator Meta is constantly making major and minor changes to its messenger. One of the newest: A small lock icon that sometimes appears at the top of the chat window. But you don’t have to worry about it – on the contrary.

The little lock has just been introduced with one of the new test versions, known in the industry as beta. This is reported by the specialized website “WABetainfo”. If you open a chat, the new symbol appears under the name of the chat partner or chat group – and then disappears again at some point. What is briefly irritating is actually intended to increase the feeling of security: the lock simply means that the chat is end-to-end encrypted.

Whatsapp: This is what the lock symbol stands for

And it has a very simple meaning. If the lock appears, users can be sure that this chat is encrypted. “We think it’s a proactive approach to make the encryption status immediately visible at the top of the chat interface,” says WABetainfo.

The fact that WhatsApp finds it necessary to display the encryption status at all is quite remarkable. Because: Actually, all chats via Messenger are basically encrypted. And that’s not new either. Whatsapp has been using this since 2016. “Everyone WhatsApp messages are encrypted using the same Signal protocol that protects messages before they leave your device,” the company says on its information page.

A conceivable explanation: Due to the new EU law DMA, Whatsapp has to open up to other messengers (you can find out more here). Here too, you want to encrypt all chats via a specially created interface, but WhatsApp could use the lock symbol to highlight its own chats as particularly secure.

What can Whatsapp really read?

How secure the encryption actually is is controversial. Whatsapp uses the Signal protocol, which is considered the most secure messenger encryption in the industry to date. However, there is a crucial gap: Because all chats run via the closed WhatsApp app, no one can check whether the provider is evaluating the chats. In any case, WhatsApp doesn’t claim that you can’t do it. The company’s documents only emphasize that the chats cannot be decrypted during transmission. However, general access to the content is not explicitly excluded.

Sources: WABetaInfo, Whatsapp