Social media participants, can now relate with friends and loved ones on Facebook with a rest of mind, as Facebook has installed a new feature, aimed at securing your conversations with friends.
Following calls from social media activists, an end-to-end encryption on the Facebook Messenger, with ‘secret conversations’, has now been introduced.
The hot new feature for messaging applications this year is security, and Facebook (FB, Tech30) cannot be left out.
Facebook, began rolling out a new end-to-end encryption feature on Friday, called, “secret conversations”, with the goal of making users feel more comfortable, when chatting about sensitive subjects.
End-to-end encryption, a system that prevents third parties from accessing data shared by users, has quickly become the norm for popular messaging services around the world.
Viber, Line and Google (GOOL, Tech30)’s Allo, have all introduced the feature, and recently, WhatsApp, owned by Facebook, followed suit in April.
Announcing the new feature in a release, Facebook said, “We have heard from you that there are times when you want additional safeguards — perhaps when discussing private information, like an illness, or a health issue with trusted friends and family, or sending financial information to an accountant”.
With the new feature, Facebook Messenger’s 900 million users, can choose to encrypt specific conversations, so that the messages can only be read on one specific device.
Facebook is also giving users the option to determine how long each message can be read for.
The opt-in encryption feature, comes months after Apple fought a very public battle with the FBI, about the use of encryption. Facebook’s decision to double down on encryption, could pave way for a similar dispute.
For Facebook, the encryption option comes at a time when it is working to expand Messenger from an application for keeping in touch with friends, to a platform for communicating with businesses and publishers, which will likely be how Facebook makes money from the application. Security could be a key selling point for that effort.
This is also coming after Whatsapp, introduced the same security, to ensure security of conversations for its users. According to Whatsapp, “The idea is simple: when you send a message, the only person who can read it, is the person, or group chat that you send that message to. No one can see inside that message. Not cybercriminals. Not hackers. Not oppressive regimes. Not even us. End-to-end encryption helps make communication via WhatsApp private – sort of like a face-to-face conversation”.
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