New symbol on WhatsApp: This means the lock and that’s why it is only visible for a short time

• WhatsApp has been encrypting all messages end-to-end since April 2016. The company now wants to make this much more visible.
• A small lock under the name of your contact should symbolize this.
• However, it will only be visible for a few seconds, after which you will see your contact’s online status again.

Anyone who opens a chat on WhatsApp will in future see a small lock under their contact’s name. What’s this new symbol about? The messenger does not mark conversations that have a chat block, but rather informs you that this chat is end-to-end encrypted. This is made clear by the addition “End-to-End encrypted”.

The encryption means that your messages can only be read by you and your contact and not by third parties. According to the messenger, not even WhatsApp itself can read your chats. With this notice, WhatsApp apparently wants to focus more on the security of its messenger. Because while WhatsApp has encrypted all chats end-to-end since 2016, you have to activate this feature yourself in other messengers – such as Telegram.

WhatsApp already indicates encryption in various places – for example at the very end of the chat list. The new, prominent lock symbol should now make this more visible. Fun fact! WhatsApp uses competitor Signal’s protocol for encryption. For this purpose, Meta entered into a cooperation with the foundation behind Signal.

Note on end-to-end encryption

There is also a vulnerability in the encryption in WhatsApp. If you save your chats in the cloud, they will be stored there unencrypted by the messenger and can theoretically be read. However, if you want to avoid this, you can also activate encryption for your backups in the settings.

So far the lock is not visible in the regular app. According to the fan blog WABetaInfo, it only appears in beta version 2.24.6.11 of the messenger for Android phones. With one of the next updates it could then find its way into the regular app.

According to the fan blog, it can’t be seen permanently under the name, but only for a very short time – a few seconds at most. WhatsApp will then display your contact’s “last online” status if they have shared it with you. Otherwise the line remains empty.

In addition to the lock, WhatsApp is also planning to introduce a QR code symbol and new buttons in the main menu. You can find out what this is all about in the linked articles. We’ll also tell you what the heart in the phone list is all about.

We’ll also tell you why the menu bar in WhatsApp is now at the bottom of Android phones.

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