Posted by Unknown / Tuesday, July 19, 2016 / No comments / tech
Facebook Is Testing Encrypted, Secret And Self-Destructing Facebook Messenger Chats
The biggest news in this front is that now
Facebook is working on a far more secure Messenger conversation, with many
other interesting features.
These protected chats will be end-to-end
encrypted, which means even Facebook will not be able to access them. This
option is currently only available for only a small subset of users, but
Facebook is looking to expand it soon.
What’s more is the added option of setting a
timer on the message, which will make the message self-destruct after a certain
amount of time. Cool isn’t it?
Facebook is utilizing the open-source
Signal Protocol, developed by Open Whisper Systems, endorsed by the likes
of Edward Snowden among others.
Facebook was quick to point out that these secret
conversations will not support many features like making payments and sharing
GIFs and videos. Also, users will need to enable the encryption option, and it
will not be set on by default like it is in the Facebook-owned chatting app
WhatsApp.
The company said that during this test phase,
they are gathering the feedback from beta users about the functionality,
measurement of performance and the tools that enable people to report
objectionable content. They are putting a lot of effort and devising thorough
technical and ethical framework for the implementation of this feature, with
the help of some of the best security and privacy experts around the globe.
With this move messenger will also become one of
the few encrypted messaging apps. It has over 900 million monthly users,
so most of the people using the web craving for more security will soon be
ecstatic about these updates.
But some critics are already dubbing this change
as another step towards creating a security situation we cannot contain. They
believe malicious elements can take unfair advantage of such level of privacy
and secrecy in data transmission; and thus want more checks and balances over
the social media and communication apps.
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