Facebook starts testing end-to-end encryption for Messenger

[phillynewsnow]

Facebook starts testing end-to-end encryption for Messenger



Meta-owned WhatsApp offers users end-to-end encryption for their chats. Oddly enough, despite it being an obvious feature, Meta has not brought the feature over to Facebook Messenger. The only way to enable it would be to create a Secret conversation.The good news is that is expected to change soon. Facebook has announced a bunch of changes that they’ll be making to Messenger as well as testing, and one of those tests involve end-to-end encryption for individual chats. According to Facebook:

“This week, we’ll begin testing default end-to-end encrypted chats between some people. If you’re in the test group, some of your most frequent chats may be automatically end-to-end encrypted, which means you won’t have to opt in to the feature. You’ll still have access to your message history, but any new messages or calls with that person will be end-to-end encrypted.”

Once again, it’s such an obvious feature and we’re actually surprised that Facebook has not introduced this as a general feature years ago, but we suppose better late than never. In addition to end-to-end encryption, Facebook is also introducing end-to-end encrypted backups for Messenger.

This means that users will be able to securely backup their Messenger chats so that no one else, including Meta, will not be able to access these chats. The test will be carried out this week on both iOS and Android, so keep an eye out for it if you’re someone who communicates over Messenger quite often.

Source: Facebook



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