Google Drive won’t count WhatsApp backups towards your storage total, but they’ll lose encryption

WhatsApp has a huge and very loyal user base, and when those users swap phones they often use the backup feature to keep their messages safe. Now, Google Drive is opening up its arms to WhatsApp backups without counting them against your storage, but there’s a slight catch…

Announced on an FAQ page recently by WhatsApp, Google Drive will let you store backups without counting them towards your storage total starting on November 12th. WhatsApp provides pretty detailed instructions on how to back up your chats to Drive on its post, but it does come with a notice attached.

Starting on November 12th, Google Drive will also be automatically removing chat backups that haven’t been updated in over a year. To avoid the loss of any data, you’ll need to ensure your backups are updated before November 12th.

Starting November 12, 2018, WhatsApp backups will no longer count towards the Google Drive storage quota. Furthermore, WhatsApp backups that haven’t been updated in more than one year will be automatically removed from Google Drive storage. To avoid the loss of any backups, we recommend you manually back up your WhatsApp data before November 12, 2018.

You can back up your chats and media to Google Drive, so if you change Android phones or get a new one, your chats and media are transferrable.

It’s also important to note that, when backing up to Google Drive, your chats will lose encryption. One of the biggest benefits of a service like WhatsApp is the fact that every message sent is encrypted end-to-end, but when you’re backing up and storing these chats on Drive, they do lose encryption. This tidbit was noted first by ZDNet, and it’s definitely something important to consider. Of course, WhatsApp messages lose encryption when they leave the app regardless of if they’re stored on Drive or elsewhere, but it’s important to consider where you’re storing these backups.

More on Google Drive:

• Google Drive’s upcoming ‘Priority’ view features ‘Suggested’ files feed, user-made Workspaces w/ Material Theme for Android
• ‘Google One’ simplifies cloud storage plans w/ family sharing, customer support, & freebies
• Google rolling out its redesigned Material Theme to Drive on the web [Gallery]
• The next version of Android will allow manual Google Drive backups

Check out 9to5Google on YouTube for more news: