WhatsApp’s owner has announced three security additions at once. Two of them will not work on their own: you have to go into settings and switch them on yourself. The third works automatically, and is probably the most important for anyone who gets strange calls.
A line under the unknown caller’s name
When a number that is not in your address book calls you, the app now shows extra information about it: whether the number is from another country, and whether you share any group with it. Two simple facts, but in most cases enough to tell a real call from the rest.
The company explains why in a sentence: a scammer relies on haste. Someone calling to claim they are from an official body and asking you to act immediately becomes a good deal clearer once you can see the number came from abroad and you share no group with it.
The feature is rolling out on Android now. The company has given no date for iPhone.
The PIN becomes a passphrase
Two-step verification in WhatsApp used to be six digits and nothing else. You can now replace it with a full passphrase: letters, numbers and symbols. The difference is large, because six digits can be guessed and a long phrase cannot.
But note: the app will not change it for you. Go to Settings, then Account, then Two-step verification, and change what is stored there. Anyone who does not is left on the six digits.
More than one passkey per account
A passkey means signing in with your fingerprint, your face or your screen lock instead of a code sent by message. What is new is that a single account now accepts more than one, so someone with a phone and a tablet registers a passkey on each, whether Android or iPhone.
Where it lives: Settings, then Account, then Passkeys. The company says more than a billion people already use passkeys.
What to do tonight, in three minutes
Open Settings once, change the PIN to a passphrase, and add a passkey for every device you use. The unknown-caller line needs nothing from you; it arrives with the app update.
Photo: a rotary dial telephone. By Elsie esq., CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.
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