Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduced a chief new characteristic for Facebook Messenger, one in an effort to considerably enhance privateness at the platform: Notifications whilst a person screenshots your disappearing messages in a Secret Conversation secured with cease-to-cease encryption.
“New replace for cease-to-cease encrypted Messenger chats so that you get a notification if a person screenshots a disappearing message,” Zuckerberg wrote on January 27, 2022. “We’re additionally including GIFs, stickers, and reactions to encrypted chats too.”
Facebook first added disappearing messages in November 2020, in each Messenger and Instagram. The pass turned into a part of a bigger attempt to offer extra safety throughout the company’s messaging platforms, with WhatsApp receiving a comparable characteristic simply weeks before.
From the very beginning, Messenger could notify customers whilst a person took a screenshot of a disappearing message, making this brand new statement appear redundant. There’s one very vital difference, however.
Facebook’s cease-to-cease encryption push
Facebook has been running to roll out cease-to-cease encryption (E2EE) throughout its messaging platforms. E2EE is a sizeable improve from server-facet encryption and is taken into consideration the gold fashionable of privateness and protection. In the case of server-facet encryption, the carrier issuer has the important thing that may be used to decrypt your information. As a result, you may by no means genuinely make certain who’s having access to your information and messages.
With E2EE, however, your information is encrypted in this kind of manner that handiest you and the man or woman you’re speaking with can study your message. Not even the issuer, whose carrier you’re using, can intercept and study your messages. Needless to say, at the same time as E2EE gives unmatched protection, it is able to be extra hard to feature capabilities which are not unusual in non-E2EE services.
That difference is what makes Zuckerberg’s brand new statement different. Facebook is now supplying screenshot notifications inside E2EE chats, including a further layer of privateness and protection to such messages. The addition of reactions, GIFs, and stickers to those chats, meanwhile, will make personal conversations a piece extra exciting. The new capabilities are rolling out now.
