End-to-end encryption added to Facebook Messenger

On December 6, 2023, Facebook Messenger developers announced that the End-to-End encryption (E2EE) or end-to-end encryption feature has been added to the social network. Although, this was not news that was particularly surprising to Facebook users. Facebook activated this feature for text messages in 2016, and a report released by the technical team of this platform indicated that E2EE is expected to make its way to voice and video calls as well. Facebook has announced that its goal of launching this feature is to improve user security and protect privacy. However, E2EE is not currently enabled by default, and if you want to start a conversation with Messenger that uses this feature, you must allow it.

Who can use end-to-end encryption? The answer to this question is all Facebook Messenger users. But if you are chatting with your friend daily and the content of your messages does not contain any valuable information, encrypting it is certainly a laughing matter. This feature can be used when data security, such as the financial industry, is paramount.

What is the End-to-End encryption feature, and what are its characteristics?

End-to-end encryption is a method for encrypting the contents exchanged by the parties to the conversation. In this type of encryption, the parties must have the decryption key to open the messages. In fact, without having these decryption keys, no one can eavesdrop or access the content of the messages. This is important when you know that this includes internet providers and even Facebook. Although familiarity with this technology requires further investigation, and you should have a basic understanding of encryption and decryption, we will explain how end-to-end encryption works in plain language below.

• You send a message (text, audio, or video) through Facebook Messenger.
• Your message is scrambled through the end-to-end encryption system to be incomprehensible and unreadable.
• Then, the encrypted content of this message is sent to the recipient.
• The recipient uses their private key to decrypt this message and access the message content.

Facebook's future goals for expanding end-to-end encryption

Although Mark Zuckerberg announced that this technology would not be added to Instagram anytime soon, Facebook plans to use encryption technology in the Instagram Direct section very shortly. It is likely that, at first, some users will be allowed to use this feature on a trial basis, and this restriction will be lifted after some time.

In conclusion, Facebook intends to steal the lead from its peers by adding security features to this platform.