WhatsApp has undergone a number of improvements to make it more secure and easier to use.

The first change is fairly trivial, allowing users to add contacts to their WhatsApp list by scanning a QR code; the second update is more significant and adds end-to-end WhatsApp chat backup on Apple's iCloud with encryption will be added.

The QR code feature generates a code for one WhatsApp user that can be scanned by another user with their smartphone camera by tapping the "scan code" option in the main app. This is trivial, but may make adding contacts to WhatsApp easier.

Since WhatsApp currently uses end-to-end encryption for messaging by default, one would be forgiven for assuming that all actions performed by the Facebook-owned messaging service have that level of security. However, that is not the case.

The ability to automatically back up chats to a cloud storage service is an excellent feature that allows users to change models while retaining their WhatsApp chats. However, when this data is sent from WhatsApp to Apple's iCloud service, the backup is not encrypted end-to-end.

In theory, even if someone could intercept the data sent from WhatsApp on the iPhone to iCloud, they would not have to deal with the same security as if they were trying to hack into WhatsApp chats directly. Thus, every time a WhatsApp chat on an iPhone was automatically updated, it could have been exposed to a so-called "man-in-the-middle" cyber attack.

However, this beta update applies end-to-end encryption to iCloud chat backups, making it very difficult to intercept and decrypt data flowing between the WhatsApp app and iCloud servers. It is unclear when this update will be released, but WhatsApp typically delivers updates quickly after the beta period ends.