Company working on fingerprint authentication for web chats

Sep 17, 2020 16:41 GMT  ·  By

WhatsApp was, is, and will most likely continue to be the number one messaging app on mobile platforms, including here both iOS and Android.

The Facebook-owned company, however, knows that the competition in this market is getting fiercer, so it’s working on several important updates that would soon go live for everyone.

Including a new web authentication feature that has recently been spotted in the latest beta build of the Android client, that is.

But let’s start with some background first.

While WhatsApp is first and foremost supposed to run on Android and iPhone, it also comes with support for the desktop, as long as a mobile device is used for authentication. In other words, while WhatsApp can run on the web and the desktop, this is just an interface for the mobile experience, as the messaging still happens on the smartphone.

To start chatting on WhatsApp Web, all you need to do is open the official website and then authenticate with your mobile phone. To do this, simply scan a QR code using the camera feature that is bundled with the mobile version of WhatsApp.

So technically, WhatsApp runs on your mobile device but you can continue chatting from the desktop, with all conversations always in sync.

“WhatsApp Web and Desktop are computer-based extensions of the WhatsApp account on your phone. The messages you send and receive are synced between your phone and computer, and you can see your messages on both devices,” WhatsApp explains.

According to WABetaInfo, the Facebook-owned firm is now working on a security update that would add another protection layer to the web authentication. Theoretically, anyone with access to a mobile device would be able to enable WhatsApp Web on a computer, so the company wants to make the whole thing harder unless the owner of the phone gives their consent.

So what the firm does is bring fingerprint authentication to the web experience.

Currently in its early days, the new feature will work in a pretty easy way. Basically, whenever you are setting up a new WhatsApp Web instance for a specific WhatsApp account, you will be prompted to scan your fingerprint on the mobile device to prove you are the one who wants to do this.

Needless to say, this feature will arrive both on Android and iPhone, but at this point, no specifics are available as to when the whole thing is supposed to happen. Most likely, WhatsApp will also add support for facial recognition on devices where such a feature is available.

WhatsApp Web and the desktop client have become a lot more popular these days, especially as the world has moved to working from home due to the global health crisis. Keeping in touch with our beloved one is thus easier on the desktop, especially because setting up WhatsApp Web doesn’t take more than a couple of minutes.

If WhatsApp Web doesn’t work on your computer, just make sure that you are connected to the Internet, and WhatsApp says the connection must be “strong.”

“You must have a strong and stable Internet connection on your computer to use WhatsApp Web or Desktop. If you see a yellow banner above your chats list with the error message "Computer not connected", check to make sure your computer's Internet connection is active. If your computer's Internet connection is working normally and you still can't send or receive messages, refresh the page if you’re on WhatsApp Web or quit and restart the program if you’re using WhatsApp Desktop,” it says.

The new authentication feature is likely to become available for testers in a future Android beta build.