It is true we are over 6 billion people on earth here. But then some of us would still love the earth to be a personal bungalow: just you! Yes, privacy is really important and that confident feeling of security uttermost. Sometimes it is actually cool if the screens of our devices are naked to just two eyes; ours only. This gets more important now that we know there are government Alsatian dogs online sniffing desperately at what we do on the internet.
Facebook understands this need for privacy and online security hence it had taken remarkable strides in making WhatsApp end-to-end encrypted. On WhatsApp since April, this had been being enabled by default for all of is users. Back in May, it was disclosed that the social network would embark on bringing such identical feature to its Messenger service. Mind you IDENTICAL, and as it has really turned out, Facebook’s plan for end-end encryption for messenger is identical but not exactly the same with that it had on WhatsApp. One deviation here is that the end-to-end encryption in Messenger is opt-in, and not enabled by default as it is on WhatsApp.
Yet at the moment, it is all one ambitious move as Facebook is asserting that is cooking plans to first roll out “on a limited” basis, to some users only. And then consequently, a broader edition would be released some time later. So should you get the feature, then you could as well return feedback.
Basically what end-to-end encryption entails is that no one has the capacity to intercept or spy into your communication; even Facebook itself can’t. It’s all personal and very private, strictly tinned between you and the person you’re interacting with.
Just in similarity with WhatsApp, the Messenger makes use of an end-to-end encryption employing the service of the Signal Protocol developed by Open Whisper Systems. So when you want to start an end-to-end encrypted chat with someone, all you need to is begin a special chat termed Secret Conversation with that person. This is shown in the picture above. This way just the content of the Secret Conversations enjoys end-to-end encryption. It is thus important to be reminded that ‘Normal’ conversations wouldn’t enjoy similar privileges. For the Secret Conversations, you could simply set a timer after which a specific message self destructs: that is simply disappear.
