Facebook has confirmed that both Messenger and Instagram Direct would be end-to-end encrypted by default by 2022. Last week, Facebook revealed it in a blog post. Users’ private messages will be accessible only by the sender and receiver with end-to-end encryption, and even Facebook will not be able to read them.
Facebook said in a blog post “Over the past year, we introduced a number of privacy and safety tools, including more privacy settings, an app lock, safer message requests, message forwarding limits and more. We’re also working hard to bring default end-to-end encryption to all of our messaging services,”
This, according to the Facebook, would help secure people’s private messages by limiting access to only the sender and receiver of the message. Facebook also stated that the security features it has already implemented are designed to work with end-to-end encryption, and that it intends to keep adding strong security features to its services.
“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,” Facebook said in a blog post.
People all over the world are demanding better, more widespread encryption for messaging services like Messenger and Instagram DMs, as concerns about user privacy and data protection grow. According to Facebook, seven out of ten Americans in 2019 believe their information is less safe than it was five years ago.