WhatsApp Introduces 'Chat Lock', So Users Can Protect Their Chats With A Password

WhatsApp is the most popular instant messaging app in the world in terms of users, and it's getting more private than ever.

It has been so long that WhatsApp is encrypted. This prevent messages from being prying by third-parties. The thing is, those third-parties don't include people who have their hands on users' device. WhatsApp is changing that.

According to the Meta-owned company in a blog post, it's bringing what it calls the 'Chat Lock' feature, "which lets you protect your most intimate conversations behind one more layer of security."

This feature essentially puts chats behind its own secure folder "that can only be accessed with your device password or biometric, like a fingerprint."

This feature also automatically hides the contents of that chat in notifications, too.

While the Chat Lock certainly allows users to improve their privacy, people started expressing their concerns about this particular feature.

This is because the feature essentially allows users to get away with cheating with their partner/spouse, and making affairs much easier to conceal.

By protecting chats behind protected folders and that locked chats can only be accessed by passcode or biometrics, enabling the feature means that notifications from these messages won’t ever appear on the notification screen, hiding the sender and actual message content.

While WhatsApp is known for its end-to-end encrypted message, users are joking that Chat Lock has "upgraded" cheating.

Many people also put their opinions in the comments of Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook post about the feature.

In the blog post, Meta said that it plans to add more features to the Chat Lock feature, such as locking on companion devices and creating unique chat-specific passwords rather than the one used for the phone.