Why are Facebook Messenger chats not encrypted?

Facebook Messenger is one of the most popular messaging apps in the world. It has over a billion monthly active users and over 100 million daily active users. However, unlike WhatsApp, which encrypts all messages by default, Facebook Messenger does not have this feature.

This means your messages can be intercepted by third parties and, technically, even Facebook, causing major privacy concerns.

So why doesn’t Facebook encrypt chats? What problem will this cause? Here are the answers to these questions.

Conversation encryption concept explained

First, let’s dive into what conversation encryption is.

Conversation encryption can take many different forms. But the article will specifically address what end-to-end encryption is. This is the process of scrambling message data to prevent anyone other than the sender and receiver from viewing it. It is used by messaging services to protect the privacy of messages sent by users.

End-to-end encryption ensures that your messages can’t be read by anyone except you and the person you’re chatting with.

There are several chat apps with end-to-end encryption – including iMessage, Signal, and Whatsapp. But some other messaging services don’t offer this level of protection by default. And Facebook Messenger is one of them.

Why aren’t Facebook Messenger chats end-to-end encrypted?

A major strength of Facebook is that it can be accessed from almost any device. You can log in to your account through any device with an Internet connection and instantly have access to all your messages.

However, this ease of access is also why Messenger chats cannot, at least for now, be encrypted by default.

Instant messaging platforms like iMessage, Signal, and of course Facebook-owned WhatsApp are ready to offer end-to-end encryption, as users typically access these platforms with a single device, unlike Messenger , where you can sign in to your account on multiple devices at the same time.

Enabling end-to-end encryption on chats by default while maintaining ease of access is currently hard work, and Facebook isn’t shy about admitting it.

Gail Kent, Chief Policy Officer at Messenger, admitted in a Facebook Newsroom post that they were working on a way to make it possible to encrypt Messenger and Instagram Direct chats by default, but this is not possible in a one afternoon early. Mr. Kent said:

“While we hope to make more progress on default end-to-end encryption for Messenger and Instagram Direct this year, this is a long-term project and we won’t be able to code it. full end-to-end encryption at least until 2022. Furthermore, the safety features we’ve introduced are designed to work with end-to-end encryption, and we plan to continue building build robust safety features in its services.”

If you’re worried about the privacy of your Messenger chats, there’s a feature in the app that you can use to conduct encrypted chats. It’s called Secret Conversations.

Refer: How to send self-destructing messages, secret messages on Facebook Messenger for more details.