Facebook Messenger Now Offers End-To-End Encryption To All Users

Earlier this year, Facebook began testing end-to-end encryption in Messenger through a new feature called Secret Conversations. Initially the feature was only available to a select number of users, but that's been changing over the past few weeks, with Facebook rolling Secret Conversations out to every Messenger user – all 900 million of them.

End-to-end encryption is a feature that's been gaining more and more attention as privacy concerns become more prevalent. With Secret Conversations, only you and the person you're chatting with can see the chat messages, meaning that not even Facebook can see what you're talking about. You can also set time limits on messages sent through Secret Conversations, forcing them to expire and automatically delete after a pre-determined amount of time.

While end-to-end encryption is definitely a good thing, there's one problem with Facebook's implementation of Secret Conversations in Messenger: the feature is opt-in, meaning your conversations won't be encrypted by default. You'll have to turn on end-to-end encryption for each conversation, which can be done by tapping the information icon in the upper-right corner of existing or new conversations.

So, while Messenger's end-to-end encryption isn't all encompassing – putting it in stark contrast to WhatsApp, a Facebook subsidiary – some end-to-end encryption is better than none, we suppose. Secret Conversations is available now in both the Android and iOS versions of Messenger, but if you're not seeing it right away, double check to make sure Messenger has been updated – Secret Conversations are only found in the app's latest version.

SOURCE: Wired