Here is how you can secure your WhatsApp account from unauthorised access

Amid a growing number of cybercrimes and frauds, popular messaging application WhatsApp is offering a new security feature to secure and protect users’ accounts from unauthorised access.

WhatsApp users can add more security to their accounts by choosing the two-step verification feature, WABetaInfo reported.

The feature involves an additional PIN code which will be required whenever a user logs into the application after putting in the 6-digit registration code.

The feature also gives the users of the Meta-owned app a choice to enter their email addresses to help them restore their WhatsApp account in case they forget the PIN. With this, the users can reset the PIN immediately by requesting a reset link.

However, there are some other ways that someone may access your WhatsApp account.

According to the WhatsApp news tracker, "criminals", using techniques of SIM swapping, are able to steal a phone number and assign it to a new SIM card if they get their hands on the private information of a user.

Though the two-step verification prevents unauthorised access into WhatsApp, this is how the users can prevent anyone from resetting the password of their mail account and the two-step verification PIN of their WhatsApp account.

One should never use their phone number when they configure the two-step verification for their mail address.

They should use authentication applications to generate token authentication codes.

Here are some of the most reliable authentication applications for this purpose:

Google Authenticator is one of the most popular authentication apps. However, it doesn't have any automatic encrypted recovery backups and it cannot be locked by using a passcode or biometric authentication.

1Password is not a simple authentication app, but it offers more features to save your credentials.

Authy can be deemed the best authentication app because it includes encrypted backups. However, disabling multi-device is recommended to prevent others from logging into the app by using a phone number.

Moreover, installing Authy on two devices is ideal if a user disables multi-device so that they still have the app somewhere else if they lose one.