As detailed by the subsidiary of Meta in its official blog, every time we want to change the mobile and reinstall WhatsApp, the application will require confirming this action on the smartphone from which we remain detached. In this way, it will be avoided that in an oversight someone can migrate accounts between phones in an unauthorized way.
The second improvement has to do with protection against malware such as the one used to access a device and its contents remotely. For this, WhatsApp will implement Device Verification, a new process that modifies the way in which messages are accessed offline when starting the messaging client. The operation is quite technical (whoever is interested can consult the article that has been published Facebook Engineering), but we can stay with the fact that it is a process totally invisible to the user.
Finally, WhatsApp will introduce new automatic security codes with recipient verification. Thanks to them, it will be possible to make sure at any time that the connection between two peers is secure (read: it connects with the person with whom we want to communicate) without having to review a 60-digit identification code or scan a QR code. The new validation process is automatic and is based on a process called “key transparency”, which in turn has been developed with an open source library that can be audited by whoever wishes.
According to WhatsApp, users should not see any change except if someone tries to impersonate their identity or that of a contact, in which case a notice will appear.
This update adds to others still in the development phase but already available in test versions, such as sending video messages analogous to audio messages, the possibility of linking the same WhatsApp account with other authorized mobile phones and the creation of of custom avatars for the profile image.
