The Indian government has released the draft National Encryption Policy that mandates users to store information of the services that use encrypted data, so that they could submit it to the law enforcement agencies when required by the provisions of the law.
Currently services like Whatsapp use end-to-end encryption. The draft encryption policy, if implemented, will mandate users of such services to store the messages they receive for 90 days. Whether it is a good thing or not is another topic altogether but here we have detailed how to store your chats on Whatsapp, which is one of the most used Messaging App in India.
Whatsapp has a built in function to back up chats in the phone’s memory itself. To be on the safer side, you can also mail the chat history to any email account you want.
Here’s how you can do that.
Step 1
In the Whatsapp home page, locate the menu icon which is on the top right corner. When tapped, it will show five options including New Group, New Broadcast, Whatsapp Web, Status and Setting. Click on Setting.
Step 2
In the setting, click ‘Chats and Calls’ option.
Step 3
Here you will see ‘Back Up Chats’ and just below that the “Email Chat’ options.
As I said earlier, the app automatically backs up your conversations on your phone’s Internal Memory but it cannot be moved to the SD card. So if you want to save some conversations particularly, email it.
Step 4
When you opt for the email, a pop up message will ask you to choose from two options – Without Media, Attach Media.
Ofcourse choose Attach Media.
Step 5
Now you have to choose your email account. In my case I choose Gmail which anyway is the default email in Android devices.
Messages are mailed in .txt format while audio/video messages are attached separately and you can see them on your mail.