By finally announcing on Thursday that end-to-end encryption will be available for one-on-one conversations and calls on Messenger, Meta fulfilled a long-standing promise made by the company.
Meta Rolls Out End-To-End Encrypted Messaging Service For Messenger
When end-to-end encryption enabled, the company claims that the sender and receiver can only view the contents of a message received through Messenger.
We’re starting to roll out default end-to-end encryption for personal calls and messages on @messenger. This isn’t a routine security update: we rebuilt the app from the ground up, in close consultation with privacy and safety experts. We added some new features too: you can now… pic.twitter.com/c7HhrjJWPf
— Loredana Crisan (@loredanacrisan) December 7, 2023
The ability to have encrypted conversations over Messenger was first made available as an optional feature in 2016.
End-To-End Encrypted Messages Feature
However, proposals for two-person conversations and end-to-end encrypted messages will now accept as standard practice following a protracted legal battle.
“This has taken years to deliver because we took our time to get this right,” Loredana Crisan, vice president of Messenger, said in a statement shared with The Verge.
“Our engineers, cryptographers, designers, policy experts and product managers have worked tirelessly to rebuild Messenger features from the ground up.”
Head of Messenger Statement
According to Crisan, Messenger features like themes and customized reactions won’t jeopardize in encrypted conversations.
All chats may “take some time” to transition to the default encryption, though.
Group chat end-to-end encryption is still optional.
Instagram Messages Soon To Be Encrypted
Furthermore, Meta anticipates that Instagram messages will become encrypted by default “shortly after” the rollout of default private Messenger chats.
However, Instagram messages not encrypted at the moment.
According to The Verge, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg declared in 2019 that the company intended to transition to encrypted ephemeral messages throughout all of its messaging apps.
To read our blog on “How to ditch Insta and messenger video chats in 9 easy steps,” click here.
