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WhatsApp will soon offer biometric authentication to link a WhatsApp account to a web browser or desktop app.
A new The Verge report WhatsApp will rely more on biometric authentication in the future. The mobile app uses a QR code to link a user account to a web browser or desktop app. But the Facebook subsidiary wants to make the process more secure so that it cannot be carried out by anyone who happens to get their hands on someone else's iPhone. The new system will be activated by default on iPhones running iOS 14 or later with Touch ID or Face ID, which means that users will have to authenticate themselves to link their account.
WhatsApp: The new feature is optional
There is an exception, however. Users who do not protect their account with Face ID or Touch ID can continue the linking process as usual. This means that the new security feature will only be optional. As a reminder: biometric authentication on iPhones is an internal device process, so WhatsApp (and Apple, for that matter) has no access to the biometric data. As is well known, this is stored on Apple's Secure Enclave. With the extension, WhatsApp wants to offer more security to those users who already value biometric authentication to protect their chat histories. According to The Verge, the corresponding update will be rolled out in the next few weeks. (Photo by Denys Prykhodov / Bigstockphoto)
