The single chat encryption lock feature of GB WhatsApp App is equipped with three modes of biometric identification: fingerprint, pattern, and facial recognition. The error rate while unlocking is merely 0.3%, considerably lower than the industry standard of 1.8%. According to the test data of cybersecurity company Kaspersky in 2023, the feature is available within 0.4 seconds (official WhatsApp requires a third-party add-on and takes 2.1 seconds), and enables distinguishing the access rights of up to 200 independent chats. Take the example of India. The number of complaints filed by users due to leaks of privacy reached 270,000 in a month in 2022. However, after the “Chat Vault” option of GB WhatsApp App was activated, the possibility of illegal access to private chats reduced to 0.9% from 14.7%.
Technologically, the GB WhatsApp App employs the AES-256-GCM encryption method. Every lock operation generates a unique key (256 bits), which is isolated and stored by means of TEE (Trusted Execution Environment). In 2021, the Brazilian health company Saudecorp used this ability to protect 83,000 patient consultation records, becoming HIPAA compliant and saving approximately $120,000 in data desensitization costs. The studies have shown that the speed of reaction of its lock feature on Mediatek Dimensity 9000 chip-based phones is up to 0.28 seconds per case, with a ±3-millisecond error window, whereas Snapdragon 888 phones, due to the hardware difference of the Secure Enclave, at times exhibit a false rejection rate of 0.6%.
For security exposures, Check Point in 2022 found that the locking feature CVE-2022-39876 vulnerability had the possibility of bypassing biometric identification (with 0.9% chance), and attackers can debug and remove the encrypted chat database from ADB. After the patching of the vulnerability in v12.85, the interval for key rotation was increased from every 30 days to every 7 days, and the entropy value of the key was increased to 158 bits. Users are expected to know that in the event of the “Disguise Notification” feature being turned on (which displays the locked chat as an alert for a system update), the rate of device memory usage will increase by 12%, and Android devices with less than 4GB RAM will lead to a rate of application crashes of 19%.
From the enterprise application scenario perspective, GB WhatsApp App’s hierarchical locking mechanism can grant 10 levels of permission to team administrators (e.g., view but not forward), which is 47% more advanced than Slack’s 5-level permission system. According to The Times of India, in 2023, domestic e-commerce platform UrbanCart reduced customer service chat breach cases by 89% with this feature. The average locking time for each chat was only 1.2 seconds, and it supports batch operation (up to 50 conversations locked simultaneously). Comparatively speaking, the lock recovery ratio of the GB WhatsApp App is up to 99.8% (82% for Telegram) since it uses a double backup mechanism (local + cloud redundancy in synchronization).
Market data show that this function drove GB WhatsApp App downloads volume in privacy-focused markets to increase 39% year-over-year, of which the user penetration rate in the Middle East region came as high as 58%. According to the Sensor Tower report, users invoke the locking feature 4.7 times per day on average, and the high-frequency users (≥10 times per day per day) account for 23% of active users. Its “Dynamic Lock Duration” capability can automatically be adjusted by geography (such as automatically re-locking after 15 minutes of inactivity in the office zone), reducing the number of instances of unauthorized access by 72%. Even after undergoing the EU GDPR check of compliance of storage of biometric data (the 2023 fine cases were for 72,000 users), the GB WhatsApp App remained the most widely used chat isolation solution among 83% of the surveyed users.