Software

The Guardian reported more than a month ago that Facebook would be rolling out end-to-end encryption for chats in Messenger. Friday, the social networking firm announced that it’s begun testing the new feature, dubbed Secret Conversations.


Facebook will be branding the encrypted chats as “Secret Conversations.”

“To enable you to do this we are starting to test the ability to create one-to-one secret conversations in Messenger that will be end-to-end encrypted and which can only be read on one device of the person you’re communicating with. That means the messages are intended just for you and the other person — not anyone else, including us. Within a secret conversation, you can also choose to set a timer to control the length of time each message you send remains visible within the conversation. Our technology uses the Signal Protocol developed by Open Whisper Systems. You can read more about the technical details here.”

Facebook has posted a white paper on how it will work, and notes that images sent within a Secret Conversation will be encrypted, too, but the metadata will not be. Facebook’s rollout of end-to-end encryption is certainly in its unique fashion, and perhaps not in the same fashion as, say, WhatsApp which rolled out its own end-to-end encryption option not too long ago, or even Apple’s own iMessage, but for some it should be better than nothing.

You can optionally set a timer to control the length of time each encrypted message you send remains visible within the conversation. Secret Conversations currently don’t support rich content like GIFs and videos, making payments or other popular Messenger features.

It is a good thing to see secret conversation without being spied on by anyone.