Are you using WhatsApp? Your account may be hackable, Stay Safe
After a malicious video sent through WhatsApp compromised Jeff Bezos' phone, it hopefully got all of you thinking about your own phone protection and how easily you can be hacked. There are plenty of tools, tips, and tricks to put in place to help protect the two billion users of WhatsApp from cybercrime, but the fact is that if a threat actor is committed enough, there's nothing we can do other than to secure ourselves in the best possible way and hope the attackers move on to less well-defended targets.
by Niranjani Jesentha Kumari Prabagararaj
Updated: Apr 21, 2020 11:37 IST
How to stay safe
Is there any way we can do to protect our account when it comes to WhatsApp? The texts are still encrypted, ensuring that law enforcement individuals can't explicitly dig into such private communications, but is there a possible way in? For both apps being used in the conversation, the encryption key to a WhatsApp message is present, and threat actors will need to get their hands on one or the other to read through those chatlogs.
You recover from your backup when you purchase a new phone and update all your previous applications and settings, with WhatsApp needing a code to be sent to a phone number. That code will validate the phone, and you'll be back in your chats.
Firstly, in your SMS messages, you should turn off the previews. This may sound simple, but many people want the ease of looking at messages even faster. When people use two-step verification (also known as two-factor authentication) without an authenticator device, they prefer to receive codes sent via SMS, but if they can be displayed on a locked screen, they're somewhat useless to a user who has left their phone unattended.
Furthermore, therefore, you should never leave unattended your phone or any computer. I've seen numerous people fall asleep on the train with their phones left at the table or even disappear into the toilet, leaving their phones surrounded by strangers. In fact, there are a lot of bad apples in businesses, and even though you trust your friends, there is still a risk that someone else in the company will pursue this attack vector, so it's best never to leave your computer alone.
Finally, there's an even better way to secure your account, which you need to complete right now. WhatsApp developed a couple of years ago its very own two-step verification for the app that is easy to follow and will avoid this assault from succeeding. Below is how to do it, so open the software and configure it!
Steps to set two-step verification
Open WhatsApp click on Settings/Account/Two-Step Verification and click on enable. Enter a six-digit code and note that you won't forget.
Then type your email address as a failsafe extra. Finally, you can see proof of a two-step authentication set up on your phone, so someone can find it far more difficult to hijack your account or move your messages to another device.
Once you open WhatsApp, you will now be asked for the PIN at random times. It's not every time you open the app, so it's not meant to become an inconvenience.
