WhatsApp Passes A Billion Passkey Users And Retires The Six-Digit PIN
WhatsApp passkeys now secure more than a billion accounts, the company says, alongside a set of changes to two-step verification and unknown-caller information.
- Platform: WhatsApp, owned by Meta
- Passkey users: more than 1 billion
- Two-step verification: the six-digit PIN is replaced by a longer password allowing letters, numbers and special characters
- Multiple passkeys can now be added to one account
- Android users get country and shared-group information on calls from unknown numbers
What WhatsApp Passkeys Replaced, And What Just Went
Two-step verification on WhatsApp has run on a six-digit PIN. It is being replaced by a longer password that can include letters, numbers and special characters.
Six digits is a million combinations, which sounds like a lot until you consider that the real attack is rarely brute force. It is a person being talked into reading their code aloud. A longer alphanumeric password is harder to guess, harder to shoulder-surf and, importantly, harder to recite convincingly over the phone to someone pretending to be support.
Passkeys Move The Target
Passkeys let a user sign in with a fingerprint, Face ID or their device screen lock rather than a password, and WhatsApp now allows several on a single account so someone carrying both an Android phone and an iPhone is not forced to pick one.
The security argument is that there is no longer a secret for a victim to hand over. Phishing works because a credential can be typed into the wrong box; a passkey cannot be, because it never leaves the device. That removes the single most common route into a consumer messaging account.
Telling Users Who Is Calling
Android users will now see whether a caller from an unknown number is based in another country and whether they share any WhatsApp groups.
Both signals are aimed squarely at scam calls, where an overseas origin and no shared groups is a common pattern. WhatsApp is adding this while Signal and Telegram push their own security features, and after its own run of launches including usernames in June and the WhatsApp Plus subscription in May.
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