End-to-end encryption (E2EE) will soon come to Facebook Messenger.
Meta recently said it plans to add end-to-end encryption to Facebook Messenger to its millions of users by the end of 2023, though it didn't tell exactly when.
WhatsApp is the only messaging app Meta has that comes with E2EE by default.
Secure Messaging For Messenger
Facebook Messenger Product Manager Timothy Buck revealed that Meta is on track to launch E2EE as a default setting to chats on the messaging app by the end of the year. As of press time, Messenger users must switch their chats to "secret conversations" mode to talk to other people through the app with E2EE.
He mentioned that Meta was already working on adding E2EE to Facebook Messenger since 2019 to enhance the security the tech giant provides on the app and give people additional confidence that their messages will remain private.
However, the team of engineers, cryptographers, designers, and policy experts found that transitioning from Messenger's configuration at the time to E2EE would be "incredibly complex and challenging." As such, Meta decided to rewrite most of Messenger's massaging and calling code base from scratch to accommodate E2EE.
"With E2EE, we couldn't rely on servers to process and validate message content," Buck explained. "We needed to redesign the entire system so it would work without Meta's servers seeing the message content."
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With the developments almost over, Buck revealed that Messenger's E2EE will become its default security setting, giving it the security Instagram and WhatsApp have been enjoying for years already. He also revealed that Mssenger's performance in terms of communication speed and message delivery reliability will remain unaffected with the coming of E2EE.
To give users a new way to manage their message history, Meta plans to give users the ability to set up a PIN to do so. To support this approach, it built out a new infrastructure of Hardware Security Modules.
However, there are some uncertainties with Messenger's encryption. Buck stated that Messenger's E2EE would become the default setting for one-to-one friends and family chats.
However, he didn't mention anything about group chats. If Meta doesn't do anything soon, group chat in Messenger will remain unsafe unless the tech giant includes them in E2EE conversations during the final few months before its release.
Pressure From External Factors
Messenger's E2EE can't come any sooner for Meta. According to Tech Crunch, there is increasing pressure on Meta to add E2EE to prevent the tech giant or others from accessing users' chat messages.
This pressure is evidenced by Meta's submission of a 17-year-old girl's DMs to authorities, forcing them to plead guilty to abortion charges. Authorities previously prosecuted the 1-year-old based on a date about her DMs from Messenger, which Meta provided soon after the Supreme Court overturned Roe. v Wade.
In a letter to the digital rights advocacy group Fight for the Future earlier in August, Meta deputy privacy officer Rob Sherman stated that Meta remains committed to rolling out E2EE for private conversations on Messenger in 2023, per The Verge. Sherman also revealed that Instagram will also get E2EE as a default setting for DMs after the encryption becomes the default on Messenger.
Instagram's help center states that while E2EE is available for DMs on the social media platform, it is only applicable on Android and iPhone devices in certain areas.
Related Article: Meta To Drop Messenger's SMS Support in September
