According to figures from third-party app analyst AppBrain in 2023, only 19% of gbwhatsapp users were able to successfully utilize cloud backup, compared to 76% for usage of official WhatsApp cloud backup. gbwhatsapp supports chat log backup through Google Drive (default 7-day cycle, max storage 5GB), but because of the violation of WhatsApp terms of service, Google actively blocks its request for backup 63% of the time (based on a sample of Indonesian users). For example, in August 2022, Google imposed API limits on unauthorized WhatsApp modifications, and gbwhatsapp’s failure rate in backing up jumped from 12% to 41%, with the median backup time rising to 4.7 minutes (up from 1.2 minutes on the original client).
Technical tests indicate that gbwhatsapp’s encryption strength for backup files is AES-128, approximately 34% weaker than the AES-256 security of the official client. If the user selected using the local backup (path: /GBWhatsapp/Databases), the average space occupied by file was 2.3GB/month (with an average 200 messages received and received on a daily basis), but both local restoration and backup were only successful at a rate of 89% due to file permission conflict or compatibility problem with the Android version. For instance, the rate of local backup and recovery request interception of gbwhatsapp in Samsung One UI 5.0 firmware stands at 28%, where users need to manually change permissions of Android/data directory, and the average time taken is 6 minutes.
37% of gbwhatsapp users in 2023 resorted to third-party cloud services such as Dropbox or Mega.nz for the purpose of backup, as per Counterpoint. The annual cost, however, is 2.5 times pricier than Google Drive (e.g., $9.99 and $24.99 for a 500GB option). With Mega.nz, end-to-end encryption reduces data breaches to 1.2%, but upload speeds are limited by server load with peak transfer rates of just 6.2Mbps (compared to Google Drive’s 18Mbps). Additionally, third-party applications such as AutoSync for Google Drive can be utilized to back up gbwhatsapp (install 24 hours apart), but testing shows a 17% increase in battery consumption (based on the 5,000mah battery test of the Mi 13 Ultra).
Privacy threat-wise, cybersecurity firm ESET found that gbwhatsapp’s cloud backup files are susceptible to being intercepted by a man-in-the-middle attack with a 5.7% probability (0.3% for official clients). For example, in a 2021 Brazilian data breach, hackers exploited a vulnerability in the unencrypted metadata of gbwhatsapp backup files (CVE-2021-30422) to steal chat histories of more than 80,000 users, with a mean loss of $230 per user (including identity theft and phishing scams). If the user adds a “dual encryption” plug-in (e.g., Cryptomator), file storage prices increase by $0.05 /GB but the risk of leakage falls to 0.8%.
Compliance issues are equally pertinent: In 2023 Meta began suing third-party WhatsApp modifications, asking Google to delete the relevant backup permissions, with the proportion of gbwhatsapp users who were presented with a “backup disabled” notice increasing to 55% (72% in Europe). Users evade detection by modifying the APK signature (e.g., re-signing the package name using APK Editor), but this resulted in a rate of up to 23% corruption of backup files (out of 12,000 experiments on the XDA Developer Forum). Alternatives such as Titanium Backup can sync all app data to the cloud, but with Root permission (less than 9% of devices), and the recovery would be about 14 minutes (official backup only requires 3 minutes).
Based on the user survey, the satisfaction rating of gbwhatsapp cloud backup feature is only 4.2/10 (the official client is 8.7), and the main pain points are focused on storage limitations and operation simplicity. As an example, taking into account file handling mechanism variance, Huawei HarmonyOS itself purges gbwhatsapp backup files 18% of the time (over periods of over 30 days), whereas an externally based backup on an SD card (capacity 1TB, cost around $25) will bring the retained data rate to 97%. Nevertheless, read/write performance degrades to 32MB/s (compared to 3100MB/s for built-in UFS 4.0). If you use NAS private cloud backup (such as Synology DS220+), the up-front capital cost is about $300, but storage cost can be reduced over time to $0.02 /GB/year, suitable for intensive users with over 500MB daily chat content.