Facebook tests encryption in Messenger

Facebook has begun testing encryption in its Messenger chat app. The social network has announced this. Facebook’s subsidiary WhatsApp previously enabled end-to-end encryption for all users.

Facebook is making a feature called Secret Conversations, in which messages are encrypted end-to-end. It doesn’t do that for all chats as many users receive messages on different devices. That’s problematic for end-to-end encryption, Facebook says. With this, the social network seems to rule out the possibility of encrypting all messages in the service.

The American company is starting Secret Conversations with a limited group of users, but it will expand the number of users over the summer. As a result, all nine hundred million users of the service should eventually be able to start a Secret Conversation.

Like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger uses the Signal protocol from Open Whisper Systems for encryption. That protocol is also included in Open Whisper’s own chat app Signal.