While a user can easily turn on WhatsApp on any new device, given that accounts are phone number-based, conversation history isn’t available unless a backup was created on the previous device. Users can set time intervals for the creation of local backups and can also choose to store those in the cloud, for fast access.

While conversations in WhatsApp have been end-to-end encrypted for years (with only the sender and recipient being able to view them), backups have been stored in the cloud unencrypted, albeit secured by the cloud services providers.