WhatsApp is making a huge change in the way it stores your contacts

WhatsApp typically relies on the address book of the smartphone it runs on to hold and manage contacts. But that could be a problem for users who lose their device and fail to back up the contacts on their phone, for people who share phones, or for users who manage multiple accounts with separate contacts on one device.

For starters, you can save contacts on WhatsApp Web and Windows, and Meta says you’ll “eventually” be able to do this on other linked devices as well. Contacts stored in WhatsApp use a new ‘privacy-preserving’ storage technology called Identity Proof Linked Storage (IPLS), which Meta explains keeps names and numbers encrypted and only accessible by the user.

In an email to The edgewrote press representative for WhatsApp Jessica Maskell that the new contacts feature will be followed by a new username system where phone numbers are not required. Other end-to-end encrypted messaging apps like Signal have also added a phone number-free option for using the app.