Meta announced on Wednesday evening
that the default setting for Messenger will encrypt the personal calls and
chats of every user, marking a significant privacy enhancement and aligning the
service more closely with its counterpart, WhatsApp.
Loredana Crisan, the head of Messenger, emphasized in an official
statement, "Because of the
encryption technology, nobody, including Meta, can see what’s sent or said,
unless you choose to report a message to us." She mentioned in a
corresponding blog post that the encryption of all Messenger chats would be
implemented over an unspecified period. The company based its approach on
various cryptographic principles, including an in-house-developed one and
another employed by the widely used Signal encrypted messaging app.
Since 2016, Messenger users had the option to voluntarily enable end-to-end encryption to secure their chats. This process involves scrambling communications to prevent third-party eavesdropping and unauthorized access to data. While Meta's WhatsApp also employs end-to-end encryption, privacy advocates generally regard Signal as a more secure communication service due to its minimal collection of user data.
"After years of work rebuilding Messenger, we’ve updated the app with default
end-to-end encryption for all personal calls and messages,” stated Meta CEO
Mark Zuckerberg in a
Facebook post on Wednesday. “Huge
congrats to the team on making this happen.”
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| Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg |
In 2019, Zuckerberg expressed the
social networking company's commitment to introducing encryption technology to
all private communications across its suite of apps. This underscored a
significant privacy initiative driven by shifting consumer preferences, with
people increasingly desiring to "connect
privately in the digital equivalent of the living room.”
“I believe the future of communication will increasingly shift to
private, encrypted services where people can be confident what they say to each
other stays secure and their messages and content won’t stick around forever,”
Zuckerberg asserted at that time.
Zuckerberg outlined his vision for
a more privacy-centric Facebook in the aftermath of a series of data-privacy
challenges, including the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which had a detrimental
impact on the company’s reputation.
Over time, Meta has introduced various privacy-related updates, such as allowing select Instagram users in specific countries to opt-in for encrypted direct messages through a 2021 test.
In 2022, Meta experimented with
Messenger, enabling users to back up their end-to-end encrypted conversations
for access on other devices. Despite occurring shortly after Meta provided
Messenger chat histories to Nebraska law enforcement in connection with an
alleged illegal abortion investigation, a Meta spokesperson clarified that
these events were unrelated.
Meta's recent encryption
announcement is likely to fuel the ongoing debate around privacy and law
enforcement's investigative capabilities. This debate was notably highlighted
in 2016 when the FBI sought Apple's assistance in developing software to unlock
the iPhones of suspects involved in a major shooting in San Bernardino,
California. Apple, at that time, refused, stating, "The same engineers who built strong encryption into the iPhone to
protect our users would, ironically, be ordered to weaken those protections and
make our users less safe."
More recently, leaders of WhatsApp
and Signal declared that their services would no longer be available in the
United Kingdom if lawmakers enacted measures that weakened encryption. The U.K.
government argued that Meta's encryption initiative would hinder efforts to
detect online child abuse activities.
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