*it might be more than 5 minutes, but is worth it anyways.

Why should I care?

I know you’re first reaction to this title. “Isn’t WhatsApp already E2E-encrypted and stuff?”. It is. That’s nice and all. But WhatsApp messages are also stored in backup files. Of these there are two types, local encrypted backups and cloud backups.

As long as your chats are stored in the default WhatsApp backup files, they are stored nice and safe. Since they are encrypted, only whoever has the key to these files may access your chat messages.

But here is the thing: Your chat messages are not only backed up in these encrypted files. WhatsApp also asks you to upload all messages a cloud service. On Apple that is iCloud. On Android it is Google Drive. And these backups are plain text, even the iCloud backups. That means any institution with access to the data stored at Google or Apple may easily read all your messages. This of course also includes Google and Apple themselves.