Meta may not be a bastion of digital privacy (and may very well be its enemy), but times may be changing. The company announced on Thursday, August 11 that it is testing end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for Facebook Messenger as the default, meaning all Messenger users would have their chats protected from prying eyes unless they choose not to. While these changes aren’t expected to hit all users for a while, there are ways to enable E2EE in Messenger right now.
How end-to-end encryption works
With typical messaging, texts are stored openly on your device, the device you’re sending them to, and the messaging platform’s server (i.e. Facebook Messenger itself). These messages can be read by anyone with access to the devices where these messages are stored, including the hosts of the messaging platform. This makes it easy for a company like Meta to hand over your messages to an authority, should such a request come.
With end-to-end encryption, however, messages are not sent and stored in plain text, but rather wrapped. If you tried to read an encrypted message, it would appear as an unrecognizable jumble of characters, making it useless to intercept.
To decrypt the message, you need a “key”. For messaging purposes, this key is either your device or the recipient’s device. These two devices are the only devices capable of decoding your particular conversation, although Meta facilitates the passage of these messages, it has no way of deciphering the messages for itself or for anyone who comes to ask for them.
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Meta is testing E2EE as the default messaging protocol for all conversations in Messenger, which would bring these benefits to all users immediately. However, testing is in its early stages at the moment, with Meta reportedly only including a couple of hundred users at first. Statistically speaking, you’re not in this test group, so you’ll need to use Messenger’s hidden E2EE feature to take advantage of the security benefits.
How to enable end-to-end encryption on Facebook Messenger
This hidden feature is called “secret chat” and it’s pretty simple to use (albeit a bit buried). To get started, open a chat you’d like E2EE for, then tap the person’s name at the top of the screen. Under “More Actions,” tap “Go to Secret Chat,” and Messenger will instantly open a new E2EE chat, with a unique black-and-white theme to indicate that it’s not a regular Messenger chat.
The problem is that the other user must be using a device and a Messenger app that supports Secret Conversations and E2EE. If they aren’t, you’ll get an error message when you try to send anything in a secret conversation. You also can’t use secret chats with groups; keep this in mind before you start sharing confidential information with your multi-party chats. You also won’t be able to send GIFs, make audio or video calls, or send payments in secret conversations, which limits the feature a bit.
Still, for E2EE purposes, secret chats do the trick – just be aware that you’ll see two chats in your app for every contact you started a secret conversation with. Be sure to tap the thread with the lock icon, not the regular conversation, if you want to protect your messages. That said, Messenger makes it pretty clear when Secret Chat is enabled, so if you don’t see a reference to it in your chat, assume E2EE isn’t active.
Other ways to use E2EE on Facebook
Secret Chat isn’t your only E2EE option for Messenger, either—there’s also something called disappearing mode. Meta, then Facebook, introduced it in November 2020, touting it as a Snapchat-like messaging experience: texts disappear after you exit the chat, and the app talks to anyone who takes a screenshot of the thread . What the company failed to emphasize, however, is that disappearing mode chats are fully end-to-end encrypted.
To use disappearing mode, all you have to do is swipe up from the bottom of one of your Messenger chats. As you do, you’ll see “Swipe up to turn on disappearing mode,” along with a progress ring that will show you how much further you need to turn on the feature. Once it fills the ring, let go: the chat will go into disappearing mode, encrypting all messages and deleting them on exit. You can also turn Stealth Mode on or off from a chat’s settings: Scroll to the bottom of the page, tap Stealth Mode, then turn the slider on.
Meta is removing disappearing mode from Messenger once it implements E2EE as the default, but you’ll still be able to enable a similar feature for disappearing messages. The company maintains Instagram’s version of disappearing mode, but it’s not E2EE, so it’s not as secure.