WhatsApp’s two-step verification feature started rolling out to everyone, the Facebook-owned company revealed on Thursday. Designed to make WhatsApp accounts more secure, this functionality requires a six-digit passcode each time a WhatsApp user tries to verify their phone number. Once the feature becomes available in your country, you’ll be able to active it by going to the app’s Settings menu and navigating to the “Two-step verification” section of the Account submenu. From here, you can enable two-step verification with a single tap. Turning on this feature for the first time will also give you an option to provide WhatsApp with your email address. While you aren’t required to do so, you can use your email address to receive a link for disabling two-step verification without a passcode. Naturally, this option would be convenient to have if you forget your passcode but make sure you provide WhatsApp with an accurate email address seeing how the company won’t make any attempts to verify it.
The Facebook-owned company initially started testing this feature back in November. While two-step verification has been a standard security feature of many popular Internet services for a while now, WhatsApp has been careful about rolling out the functionality to all of its users, as evidenced by the fact that this option has been in beta for three months. Two-step verification is being added to WhatsApp through a staged rollout, meaning it may be a few days before you get to use it. As for the feature itself, users who have two-step verification enabled will occasionally be asked to provide their passcode to WhatsApp even when they aren’t trying to verify their phone numbers. The company explained that this is a conscious design decision made to help people remember their passcodes. As such, one cannot disable these checks without also disabling two-step verification.
As was the case in beta, if you’ve forgotten your passcode, you won’t be able to reverify your number on WhatsApp during the first seven days of last using your app without a passcode. While you’ll be able to reverify your number after that period is over, all of your pending messages will be deleted. On the other hand, if you reverify your number on WhatsApp after not using the app for 30 days without a passcode, your account will automatically be deleted and replaced with a brand new one.