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How to Delete Hidden WhatsApp Chat History Backup From Google Drive


Recently Google and WhatsApp had an agreement in which Google agreed to not count the storage space taken by your WhatsApp chat database file against your Google Drive storage quota. WhatsApp provides two ways to backup your chat history. One is the local backup which automatically takes place daily and the chat history file gets stored on your phone's internal storage. The second option is the Google drive backup, you can store your WhatsApp backup on Google drive.

For this purpose, you'll need a Google account that WhatsApp will ask during chat backup. Google blog has stated that WhatsApp chat databases that have not been updated for more than a year will be automatically deleted after October 30, 2018. So you need to update your chat history backup. But do you think Google drive is a safe way to save your WhatsApp chat history backup file?

Why Storing WhatsApp Chat Backup History on Google Drive is Not a Good Option

WhatsApp introduced end-to-end encryption in 2016 to protect the privacy of its users. With end-to-end data encryption standard, the messages and media files that you send on WhatsApp will remain encrypted. WhatsApp makes a local backup of chat history on your phone's storage. This chat history database file is unreadable in its original state. But it can be easily restored on a new WhatsApp number and can be decrypted without any extra efforts. So, technically there is no use of this encryption because if someone gets your chat database file then he/she can read your messages by restoring the backup on a new number.

➜ Also Read: How to Save WhatsApp Chat History as Text File

But storing your WhatsApp chat backup on Google drive is even scarier. WhatsApp stores unencrypted chat history database on Google drive. Which means there is no encryption at all and Google can read your WhatsApp messages and may handover your chat history to Governments on request. Not only Google or Governments but if you lose your phone then someone will take over your Google account and may restore your chats on another WhatsApp number using the Google drive WhatsApp chat backup.

In both, the cases encryption is just a mere word. It fails to serve the purpose of user privacy. You can easily restore and read WhatsApp chat history from one number to another. So, it is better to delete your WhatsApp Google drive backup and only keep a local backup.

Your WhatsApp chats may reveal a lot about you if someone gets a hold of them. So, keep your phone secure and never use Google drive backup. In my opinion, don't backup WhatsApp chats at all and keep deleting backup or choose to never backup your chats automatically.

How to Delete Hidden WhatsApp Chat History Backup From Google Drive

Google Drive and Google Drive for business, Google Drive for Work store your WhatsApp chat history database in a hidden way. It actually doesn't store the chat database file in its original form but in a way that is readable by WhatsApp and Google only. Recently, Google was found to be tracking its users even when the GPS remained shut. So there's a lot of privacy concerns when you use online cloud services. Only you can keep your privacy private. To delete the WhatsApp chat history backup from Google storage drive, you have to follow the steps below.

➜ Also Read: Send any file type in WhatsApp [100MB max]

  • Go to drive.google.com for Google cloud login and log in with your Google account that is being used by WhatsApp.
  • When the main page opens click the 'Settings' a gear-like icon just next to the help button. From that options click 'Settings'.

  • A new window will open click 'Manage Apps'. Scroll down and find WhatsApp. Click 'Options' next to it and select 'Delete hidden app data'.
  • A popup will open asking you to delete the hidden WhatsApp chat backup. Click the 'Delete' button.

Remove WhatsApp Access to Your Google Drive Account

Deleting the hidden WhatsApp chat history data isn't enough. If you don't revoke WhatsApp access to your Google drive account then when you backup chat history on WhatsApp it will again save the chat database on Google drive. So you have to stop this.

  • Go to myaccount.google.com and under 'Sign-in & security' click 'Apps with account access'.


  • Scroll down and find WhatsApp. Click 'MANAGE APPS' under it.
  • Click 'WhatsApp Messenger' under 'Third-party apps with account access'.

  • Click 'REMOVE ACCESS' and you're done. Click 'OK' to confirm.
  • After that WhatsApp will no longer be able to upload your chat history to your Google account.

Completely Removing Google Account from WhatsApp

After revoking access WhatsApp will again ask for permission if you try to backup your chats. If you accidentally grant permission then your chat history will be uploaded again to Google cloud drive. So to prevent this we have to completely remove the Google account from WhatsApp.

  • Take a fresh backup of your WhatsApp chat history by going to 'Settings>Chats>Chat backup'. Tap the 'BACK UP' button and backup your most recent and entire chat history to the WhatsApp folder.
  • Now copy this freshly updated 'WhatsApp' folder from your phone's storage and store it to another location like your PC. 
  • Now go to android 'Settings' and find 'Apps'. Tap it to open and find WhatsApp.
  • Open it and tap 'Storage' then tap 'CLEAR DATA'.
  • Now, re-setup WhatsApp by entering your mobile number. Don't worry your chats will be restored during the setup.
  • Please make sure after you restore your chats during setup then next step will ask you to set up the backup interval for Google Drive. 
  • You have to select 'Never', if you select any other option then you will also have to add your Google account. Without doing this WhatsApp can't complete setup. So choose 'Never' to prevent such a situation.

  • Now when you see your chats go to 'Settings>Chats>Chat backup'. You'll see here that under 'Google Drive Settings' the account is to 'None' and backup is set to 'Never'.
  • In this case, if you tap the green 'BACK UP' button then it will store your chat database on your phone's internal storage which is much more secure than Google storage WhatsApp backup.

Using WhatsApp comes with a great responsibility as you have to keep your data safe. So be careful and take and store backups smartly. 


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