Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has announced that it plans to expand its default end-to-end encryption to Messenger by the end of this year. This basically means that the messages sent on Messenger will be encrypted, just like in WhatsApp, so that only the sender and recipient can read them.
“Starting today, millions more people’s chats on Messenger will be upgraded to stronger encryption standards as part of our ongoing end-to-end encryption (E2EE) testing. We remain on track to launch default E2EE for one-to-one friends and family chats on Messenger by the end of the year,” company announced in a blog post on Tuesday.
Meta has been testing end-to-end encryption in Messenger and Instagram DMs for several years and it has already rolled out the feature to some users in specific countries. The company believes that the feature is ready for wider deployment, and that it will help to protect users’ privacy.
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End-to-end encryption is a method of secure communication wherein only the sender and recipient of a message can read it. This means that even Meta itself cannot see the content of messages sent over Messenger.
“We know people want a space to connect and they want to know that those conversations are private, safe and secure. That is why we’ve spent time building a team of talented engineers, cryptologists, designers and policy experts who are all committed to rolling out default end-to-end encryption on Messenger,” said Melissa Miranda, Product Manager at Meta.
The users of Messenger will have to update their app to the recent build in order to access the default E2EE.
In addition to rolling out default end-to-end encryption, Meta has also added adding some new features to Messenger. These features include chat themes, custom chat emojis and reactions, group profile photos, link previews, active status and Bubble on Android. These new features are expected to make Messenger more fun and engaging, while still protecting users’ privacy.
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