For the last couple of years, it seems, Facebook has become one of the most notorious tech giants in the industry. The company has a bad privacy and security record and it has been facing a lot of backlash for this. Moreover, the company almost has a monopoly power of social media with apps like Instagram and Messenger.
However, the company is trying to improve its public image by implementing security features. Encryption is generally considered a good security upgrade but as per the latest news, Facebook Messenger and Instagram chats won’t be encrypted by default at least till 2022.
Back in 2016, Facebook first rolled out the end-to-end encryption for Messenger but this feature is only available if you switch the conversation to ‘Secret Conversation’ mode. It should be noted that the above-mentioned mode restricts a few other features from working too. On the other hand, Instagram does not even have end-to-end encryption security.
Facebook discussed how it is going to roll out encryption to Messenger and WhatsApp. Facebook is also considering cross-communication between the platforms.
In its blog, Facebook posted a few studies and interviews about privacy but they were not explicit about what they are planning to do.
The blog post says, “While we expect to make more progress on default end-to-end encryption for Messenger and Instagram Direct this year, it’s a long-term project and we won’t be fully end-to-end encrypted until sometime in 2022 at the earliest. Moreover, the safety features we’ve already introduced are designed to work with end-to-end encryption, and we plan to continue building strong safety features into our services.”
It is quite surprising to see that it took Facebook this long to come up with something like this. End-to-end encryption has been one of the popular features with most apps now.
