Facebook Messenger to get end-to-end encryption
11 Jul 2016
Facebook Messenger is set to get end-to-end encryption feature with new Secret Conversations mode, the social network confirmed. The move follows WhatsApp when it came to end-to-end encryption.
With end-to-end encryption, messages, videos, photos, calls made over the app could not be read by anyone; not Facebook, not third-parties like the government or cyber-criminals or hackers.
End-to-end encryption meant device level encryption, and the data was not stored on the company's servers.
However, while Facebook Messenger encryption would only be activated during the 'secret conversations' WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption was enabled across the app by default, while on mode.
This was similar to the mode in messaging app Telegram, where only 'secret chats' were end-to-end encrypted, and users could set a timer to make these chats disappear.
Facebook Messenger would also allow users to set a timer on these 'secret conversations,' and the messages would disappear after the allocated time, once they had been read by the other users.
To launch a secret conversation users would need to tap on their friend's name and once one scrolled down, this option would appear. Facebook Messenger is currently testing the end-to-end encryption, and so it would not be seen for now, but the company had promised a roll out soon.
According to the company's statement, the ''secret conversation'' feature was slated to be rolled out to select users starting last Friday, to be followed by a wider deployment later this summer.
The end-to-end encryption feature would give Facebook users a way of communicating over the network's proprietary Messenger application in a manner that would make correspondence undecipherable to anyone other than the sender and recipient, a possibility that had alarmed law enforcement officials.
''That means the messages are intended just for you and the other person - not anyone else, including us,'' Facebook said in a blog post announcing the feature Friday.
