End-to-end encryption is all the rage, and Facebook obviously wants to stick with it. The social network announced last Friday the introduction of a new feature to its mobile application, Messenger, allowing end-to-end encryption on video calls made through the application. Messenger already offered, like WhatsApp, end-to-end encryption of conversations written on its platform since 2016. The application offers an option to encrypt the content of audio and video conversations on its platform. This option was announced last week via a blog post, and will be gradually rolled out to all users.
Optional encryption
Facebook explains that “End-to-end encryption is already widely used by applications like WhatsApp to protect personal conversations from hackers and criminals. It becomes the industry standard and functions as a lock and key, where only you and the people in the chat or call have access to the conversation ”.
Unlike other apps that offer end-to-end encryption, Messenger offers this feature as an option, and requires the user to activate it before they can take advantage of it. To do this, go to the conversation options and select “Access the secret conversation”. Call encryption will work on the same logic.
Messenger is also announcing plans to beta test encryption for group video and audio calls, as well as group text chats. Along with this improvement will be new options for controlling group chats, to determine who can have access to which conversations. For now, no launch date has been announced for these features, which will be beta tested with some users.
At the same time, Facebook is announcing new options for managing ephemeral messages in Messenger, which can now be configured to be erased within a period ranging from 5 seconds to 24 hours. The social network is also announcing a beta test of an option to enable end-to-end encryption of private messages on its Instagram application.
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