(Image source from: privacyitalia.eu)

WhatsApp is planning to change its policy on backing up and storing your data. In particular, your old photos and videos may stand deleted forever, as per the latest post by the instant messaging app.

The practice followed by WhatsApp thus far has been to keep all data, text messages, videos, and images for extended periods of time. It seems to have now get into an agreement with Google such that the backups will now be onto Google Drive and not to your device. At the same time, WhatsApp data won't be counted when it comes to the space occupied on Google Drive is concerned. This again appears to be part of this agreement between the two.

The date this change will come into effect in November 12, 2018. From this date onwards, the new data backup regime will come into force and according to WhatsApp those data not backed up for over a year will be automatically deleted from Google Drive without recourse to the user.

According to experts, you will have to manually backup all your data before this November 12 date to protect your data. You can do this on your Google Drive. Do make sure your device is connected through Wi-Fi, especially if the size of your is big since it will consume data.

"Due to a new agreement between WhatsApp and Google, WhatsApp backups will no longer count against Google Drive storage quota. However, any WhatsApp backups that have not been updated in more than a year will automatically be removed from storage," Google said in an e-mail to its users.

To be back up data on WhatsApp, users will have to tap on the sandwich menu on the top right corner of the app's homepage. Tap on Settings and choose chats and then chat backup. This is sufficient to backup all your WhatsApp data on to your Google Drive.

By Sowmya Sangam