WhatsApp will greatly improve its contact management thanks to new functions. In particular, you will be able to manage them from any device and only save them on the application. Real progress.
Until now, on WhatsApp, it was only possible to save contact information via the internal address book of your smartphone. It is through this, and only this, that the application could store, manage and synchronize contacts. A system that quickly poses a problem in the event that we lose our phone without having backed it up first. Fortunately, Meta announces in a blog post the upcoming arrival of a contact manager independent of the native address book of our smartphone, which will be accessible on all devices connected to our account. Finally !
WhatsApp: a contact manager worthy of the name
Several new features have been announced. First, instant messaging will modify the addition of contacts. Until now, they could only be added from our smartphone, either by entering a phone number or by scanning a QR code. Soon it will be possible to do it directly from our computer, on WhatsApp Web and Windows, as well as on other devices connected to the application.
In addition, the application will allow us to add a new contact only on WhatsApp, rather than saving it in the native address book of our mobile phone. This novelty is “the ideal solution when you share your phone or want to separate your personal and work contacts when managing multiple WhatsApp accounts on your device”says Meta. In fact, all contacts saved in the application will be synchronized with the backup so that they can be restored from any device connected to the account.
Finally, Meta will add the ability to manage and save contacts by their username, and no longer just by their phone number. An additional guarantee of confidentiality since it will no longer be necessary to share your telephone number to send a message to someone.
To be able to offer these new features, WhatsApp uses a new encrypted storage system called Identity Proof Link Storage (IPLS). When registering a contact, the system generates a key on the device. When a contact is retrieved, the client authenticates their identity. The app also works with services from internet security company Cloudflare. All changes to the cryptographic properties of the user directory are signed. In this way, WhatsApp wants to ensure that no one has modified the contacts stored in the application. No deployment date has yet been indicated, so we will have to wait a while before being able to take advantage of these new features.