The industry standard for instant messaging is quickly becoming more secure. Meta (that used to be Facebook, ‘member?), is rolling out an update that will see its Messenger service gain end-to-end encryption in more of its features. This includes group chats and calls via the platform.
In August 2021, Meta added E2E encryption to its call feature, but it wasn’t enabled by default and was only available to a small test group of users. The company details in an announcement post that it will now roll out to all Messenger users. This will happen over the next few weeks.
The same goes for the group chats feature. Users can now be sure that their messages in groups in the Messenger app are all encrypted. Again. We reckon the feature should be manually enabled and isn’t enabled by default. It’s probably a good idea to switch that toggle to ‘On’ in the settings.
Meta’s bet on encryption
Encryption brings an added level of security to any communication that occurs over a digital platform. It enables only the sender and receiver (and possibly someone peeking over a shoulder) to read the content. The messages (or calls) don’t live on a server and will need to be decrypted to be viewed otherwise.
“E2E encrypted messaging is not the same as the secure Vanish mode that’s available in Messenger and Instagram, as messages sent in an E2E encrypted chat don’t disappear by default. However, the feature does offer support for disappearing messages and it even alerts users when someone takes a screenshot of a disappearing message,” XDA Developers details.
While the above features aren’t completely new to the platforms, they’ll now be available to everyone. Be sure to head to your settings and enable encryption on those group chats/calls. The platform’s chats are equally unencrypted unless you turn the feature on — this is called ‘Secret Chats’ in the app.