WhatsApp will delete your chats, photos and videos – here’s how to keep them safe

WHATSAPP will soon start deleting certain messages, photos and videos that you've saved.

It's all part of a brand new app update that changes the way backed-up WhatsApp content works.

Until now, WhatsApp backed up your content into Google Drive – a popular cloud storage service.

But Google is now making a handy change: your WhatsApp back-ups won't use any Google Drive storage space.

The messages, photos and videos you've backed up will still be stored on Google Drive, but they won't count towards your storage limit.

Sadly, there's a catch – WhatsApp will start deleting certain bits of old content.

If you haven't updated your WhatsApp back-up for more than a year then it'll be completely wiped from Google Drive.

That means any old messages or pictures you thought you had kept safe in the cloud will disappear forever.

"Due to a new agreement between WhatsApp and Google, WhatsApp backups will no longer count against Google Drive storage quota," Google explained in an email to users.

"However, any WhatsApp backups that have not been updated in more than a year will automatically be removed from storage."

It's not a huge surprise that this change is being made.

After all, Google offering unlimited WhatsApp storage probably means more users will take advantage of the free service.

So Google will be keen to cull old back-ups to free up some valuable space. After all, more than 1.5billion people use WhatsApp each month.

Sadly, it's possible that some people might miss the alert – and lose their online valuables for good.

Importantly, messages won't actually be deleted from your app, but they will be deleted from Google Drive.

So if you change phones or delete WhatsApp and want to restore your messages from the back-up, you might not be able to.

Google said that the new system will "go into effect for all users" on November 12, 2018.

It advises: "To avoid the loss of any backups, we recommend that people manually back up WhatsApp before November 12, 2018."

How to manually back up your WhatsApp
First, make sure you have a Google account and have Google Drive installed on your phone.

Also, switch onto Wi-Fi, so you don't use up valuable data saving all of your messages and photos to the cloud.

Then open your WhatsApp app and go into Menu.

From there, go to Settings, then Chats, then Chat Back Up.

If you select Back Up then everything on your phone should automatically be backed up to Google Drive.

You can set WhatsApp to make regular back-ups, which we recommend.

That way, your messages will be safe – and can be restored if you ever lose your phone, or change to a new model.