Facebook Messenger and Instagram won't get encrypted messages until 2023

(Pocket-lint) - Meta won't rotation retired end-to-end encryption by default connected Facebook Messenger and to Instagram conversations until 2023.

Earlier this year, Meta promised the privateness enactment would beryllium disposable to each Facebook Messenger and Instagram users "sometime successful 2022 astatine the earliest". Now, the genitor institution of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp has revealed via a station successful The Telegraph (as archetypal reported by The Guardian) that the full effort has been delayed owed to concerns astir idiosyncratic safety. 

With end-to-end encryption, lone a sender and recipient tin spot a message. While messages sent done Facebook Messenger and Instagram tin beryllium end-to-end encrypted, the enactment isn’t enabled by default, and now, it won't beryllium for different mates of years. Davis said Meta doesn't privation the diagnostic to hinder its quality to assistance halt transgression activity, and that it wants to "get this right".

So, to assistance "public information efforts", Meta plans to present usage a "combination of non-encrypted data" crossed apps, relationship information, and reports from users.  Keep successful caput WhatsApp already supports end-to-end encryption by default.

The UK, the US, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India, and Japan person each besides signed connected to an planetary statement that warns astir the dangers of encryption and calls upon platforms to springiness instrumentality enforcement backdoor entree to encrypted messages and files with a warrant. 

According to the BBC, the UK’s Home Secretary believes end-to-end encryption could marque it hard to forestall kid maltreatment online.

Writing by Maggie Tillman. Originally published connected 22 November 2021.