Facebook Messenger Will Tell You If Someone Screenshots Your Disappearing Message

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a major new feature for Facebook Messenger, one that will significantly improve privacy on the platform: Notifications when someone screenshots your disappearing messages in a Secret Conversation secured with end-to-end encryption.

"New update for end-to-end encrypted Messenger chats so you get a notification if someone screenshots a disappearing message," Zuckerberg wrote on January 27, 2022. "We're also adding GIFs, stickers, and reactions to encrypted chats too."

Facebook first introduced disappearing messages in November 2020, in both Messenger and Instagram. The move was part of a larger effort to provide additional protection across the company's messaging platforms, with WhatsApp receiving a similar feature just weeks before.

From the very beginning, Messenger would notify users when someone took a screenshot of a disappearing message, making this latest announcement seem redundant. There's one very important difference, however.

Facebook has been working to roll out end-to-end encryption (E2EE) across its messaging platforms. E2EE is a significant upgrade from server-side encryption and is considered the gold standard of privacy and security. In the case of server-side encryption, the service provider has the key that can be used to decrypt your data. As a result, you can never truly be sure who is accessing your data and messages.

With E2EE, however, your data is encrypted in such a way that only you and the person you're communicating with can read your message. Not even the provider, whose service you're using, can intercept and read your messages. Needless to say, while E2EE offers unrivaled security, it can be more difficult to add features that are commonplace in non-E2EE services.

That distinction is what makes Zuckerberg's latest announcement different. Facebook is now providing screenshot notifications within E2EE chats, adding an additional layer of privacy and security to such messages. The addition of reactions, GIFs, and stickers to these chats, meanwhile, will make private conversations a bit more exciting. The new features are rolling out now.