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Long gone is the tradition of storing contacts in a Rolodex; we now expect our contacts to be accessible on any of our personal devices with the help of the cloud. Finally rising to this expectation is WhatsApp, with the introduction of a feature to save contacts in the messenger’s cloud storage.
Announced today on WhatsApp’s blog, the messaging platform will now let you save and manage contacts directly in the app. Previously, to find someone on WhatsApp, you had to access data from your device’s integrated contact list, type in a number manually, or scan a QR code. When adding a connection to WhatsApp that did not already exist in your device’s contacts, you had to save that contact locally.
Of course, saving contacts locally is not ideal when you lose your device, voluntarily upgrade your phone, or need to access contact information on your computer instead of your phone, or vice versa.
To accompany this update with security assurances, WhatsApp is pointing to its Identity Proof Linked Storage, an encrypted system to keep your contacts safe.
While it doesn’t seem like a huge upgrade, there are a few scenarios where WhatsApp’s cloud-based contact storage could be really useful.
Contacts Linked to Separate Accounts
When you combine this feature with an update from last year, allowing you to set up multiple WhatsApp accounts on a single device, you get the capability of separating contacts per profile. For example, if you have a work account and a personal account, you can save contacts separately to each account.
So, in off-work hours, you can easily ensure you’re reaching out to your friend Dan, instead of the chatty Dan that works in the mail room.
A Stepping Stone to Greater Privacy
In addition to its current benefits, the technology required to offer this feature will also support a future upgrade. The company’s blog announcement claims that WhatsApp will soon have the option to share contacts by username only, without a visible phone number. WhatsApp notes that this adds “an extra degree of privacy” in cases where you don’t want to share your phone number.
In my opinion, the latest update feels like an overdue feature, considering that cloud-based contact storage is the norm for most mobile devices. Plus, the fact that the messenger is only now teasing a username-only privacy feature puts it behind a competitor like Signal, which already offers this capability. This isn’t too surprising, as when comparing Signal to WhatsApp, the former is known for being more privacy-minded. It looks like WhatsApp could be following that lead, but with an owner like Meta, I’ll believe it when I see it.