WhatsApp has been constantly in the news lately. Recently, it raised a lot of controversy for updating its privacy policy and terms. The backlash was so bad that it literally had to postpone the cut-off date and explain the significance of the update. Today, the company has rolled out a new security feature for WhatsApp Web and Desktop users.
WhatsApp in a Tweet, announced that it is rolling out Facial recognition and Fingerprint authentication for Web and Desktop users. For the unaware, WhatsApp apart from Android/iOS mobile platforms, offers services in Web(via Internet browser) and Dekstop(via Software) mode on computers.
The Desktop mode is available for Windows, Mac OS and Web works on any internet browser but require linking their accounts from mobile phones. Anyway, WhatsApp says that with the new feature, users will require to authenticate in their phones while linking/logging into their Accounts to the Web/Desktop.
Back in 2019, we saw evidences of fingerprint authentication on Android Beta. After rounds of Beta testing, the feature made it to the final version. Shortly before, the iOS users also got the authentication but it was Face Unlock owing to the absence of fingerprint on newer flagships.
Similarly, WhatsApp is equally focusing on PC as its recently got support for Audio/Video calls. Coming back, the new update for Web/Desktop adds an extra layer of security which was a simple QR code scanning before.
WhatsApp also says that the authentication is taken care of by respective APIs and it doesn’t have access to the biometric data. Nevertheless, the feature, which is currently not available for everyone, will be rolling out to Android(eligible – with fingerprint)/iOS(above 14+) users in the coming days.
After this, by default, you need to authenticate the linking and if you wish to remove it, you have to disable the fingerprint/face unlock on your phone as a whole. That said, the next big update could be the multi-device support.
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