Messenger already provides end-to-end encryption on one-on-one text chats sent by users. “People expect their messaging apps to be secure and private, and with these new features, we’re giving them more control over how private they want their calls and chats to be,” Ruth Kricheli, Director of Product Management, Messenger wrote in a blog post on Friday. “In the past year, we’ve seen a surge in the use of audio and video calling with more than 150 million video calls a day on Messenger. Now we’re introducing calling to this chat mode so you can secure your audio and video calls with this same technology if you choose.” Now, the same feature is available for calls, which keeps the content of users’ messages and calls in an end-to-end encrypted conversation protected from the moment it leaves their device to the moment it reaches the receiver’s device. “This means that nobody else, including Facebook, can see or listen to what’s sent or said. Keep in mind, you can report an end-to-end encrypted message to us if something’s wrong,” Kricheli added. “End-to-end encryption is already widely used by apps like WhatsApp to keep personal conversations safe from hackers and criminals. It’s becoming the industry standard and works like a lock and key, where just you and the people in the chat or call have access to the conversation.” Besides the above, Facebook has also updated controls for disappearing messages. It has updated this setting to provide more options for people in the chat to choose the amount of time before all new messages disappear, from as few as 5 seconds to as long as 24 hours. End-to-end encryption doesn’t work for Messenger group chats and calls. However, the company will start testing end-to-end encryption for group chats, including voice and video calls in Messenger in the coming weeks. Additionally, it also plans to begin limited testing of end-to-end encrypted messages and calls for Instagram DMs.
