Facebook rolls out encryption for voice and video calls made through its Messenger texting app on Friday, increasing user privacy.
smartphones have become a more contentious issue. Since 2016, it has been possible to encrypt text chats on Messenger. The number of audio or video calls made on Messenger has increased to more than 150 million per day, prompting Facebook to add the option of scrambling exchanges from one end to the other to prevent eavesdropping.
“The content of your messages and calls in an end-to-end encrypted conversation is protected from the moment it leaves your device to the moment it reaches the receiver’s device,” Messenger director of product management Ruth Kricheli said in a blog post. “This means that nobody else, including Facebook, can see or listen to what’s sent or said.”
End-to-end encryption has been popularly used by apps such as Facebook’s WhatsApp and is quickly becoming an industry norm.
Facebook has confirmed that it is trialing the encryption of group chats and calls on Messenger, as well as direct messages on its image-focused Instagram social network.
