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Meta has started the rollout of default end-to-end encryption for Messenger, marking a significant security enhancement. This move, announced by Mark Zuckerberg, ensures that personal calls and chats on Messenger will, by default, be protected by end-to-end encryption.

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Meta has begun rolling out Messenger’s default end-to-end encryption protection after years of promises and scant testing. Mark Zuckerberg announced that by default, personal calls and chats will use end-to-end encryption. Group chat encryption is still an optional feature, though.

Since end-to-end encryption prevents Meta or other outside parties from accessing chat data, it is a crucial security measure.

“We took our time to get this right, so it has taken years to deliver. In a blog post, Loredana Crisan, Head of Messenger at Meta, stated, “Our engineers, cryptographers, designers, policy experts, and product managers have worked tirelessly to rebuild Messenger features from the ground up.”

In a restricted test, Meta debuted Messenger’s end-to-end encryption capability in 2016 with the “secret conversations” feature. The encryption feature for voice and video calls on the app was introduced by the company in 2021. Starting in January 2022, the social media behemoth started offering group chats and phone calls with end-to-end encryption. Meta began testing end-to-end encryption for private conversations in August 2022. The company announced in August 2023 that by year’s end, it would implement end-to-end encryption by default.

Meta explained on its engineering blog that the reason end-to-end encryption, which it uses the Signal protocol for, took so long to roll out was because the company had to completely rebuild some features, like the sticker library and chat storage.

With this release, Messenger will get one step closer to attaining complete end-to-end security, much like WhatsApp, another messaging app owned by Meta. After the Messegner rollout, the company said in August that Instagram direct messages would also be protected by end-to-end encryption.

In addition to this security update, Meta is releasing new features for Messenger, such as the option to edit a message up to 15 minutes after it was sent, new photo and video layouts, the ability to speed-play audio clips in voice messages at 1.5 or 2 times, and a new interface for messages that disappear. The business added that it is developing the capability for Messenger users to send high-definition images and videos.

Courtesy Meta