(Image source from: Economía Digital)

The most popular freeware instant messaging app globally confirmed its prior announcement that, as of Monday, any users who have not backed up their chats and stored data on Google Drive, file storage and synchronization service developed by Google, will lose their chat histories.

The Facebook-owned WhatsApp had reached an agreement with Google last August to store user content on the Google Drive cloud storage service without said data affecting the user's maximum memory limit, Efe reported.

Moreover, WhatsApp warned that any backups that had not been updated in over a year would also be automatically removed from the Google Drive storage.

This will as well let users to effortlessly reload their data on different or new Android smartphones. Android users can update their copy and configure its update frequency as long as they have a personal account on Google.

Earlier this year, WhatsApp's Chief Executive Officer and co-founder, Jan Koum, announced he was leaving Facebook.

-Sowmya Sangam