Meta starts rolling out end-to-end encryption in Facebook Messenger

Meta is pressing ahead with default end-to-end encryption on chats and calls in Messenger, with the rollout beginning today. End-to-end (e2e) encryption has been an option on the platform since 2016, but Meta's announcement means it will become the default. However Meta's head of Messenger, Loredana Crisan, noted that it might …

[Scott 26]

didn't work in a messenger group I'm in....

Option to use E2EE was there, but when I went to send a message, it simply "failed to send"

[Yorick Hunt]

It's actually E2E2EE - encryption with three ends, because they still have to syphon off a feed for Frattelo Magna.

[Anonymous Coward]

More misdirection??

Quote: "...upshot is that nobody, not even Meta, can see what's sent or said..."

Why are citizens relying on Mark Zuckerberg (and trusting Mark Zuckerberg) to protect their messages?

Or Signal for that matter?

There's still the metadata about the end point clients, about the location of said clients....even before we worry about so-called "backdoors"!!

Private encryption, care about end point configuration, use of internet cafes.....these all seem to me more likely to ensure privacy for this citizen.....

....but what do I know?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anonymity not required

Privacy and anonymity are two separate things and should not be conflated here. Most people don’t want to communicate anonymously in private (that’s more beneficial in a public setting) but they do want the contents of their communications to remain confidential between themselves and the people they’re communicating with. This is what is being made available here and it should be applauded, irrespective of the rest of Meta’s offerings.

Would I personally start using it? No, because I don’t use Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn or any other similar nonsense. But, is this good for those who lacked the common sense to have switched to a decent zero-knowledge encrypted instant messaging service by now? Absolutely!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Anonymity not required

@AC

Sorry.....but with folk in Cheltenham or Fort Meade snooping on EVERYTHING, it seems to me that anonymity is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY for privacy.

If my messaging is PRIVATE but is not ANONYMOUS....the spooks already have a lever.

Just saying.........

[Anonymous Coward]

End-To-End-Encryption

Ordinary email can do the job....free.....no fees....and your own (not someone else's) software!

Kit required:

TOKENS

- some validated 50,000 bit prime numbers (see the gmp library, but you need an AMD Ryzen 9 or bigger)

- alternatively some research on elliptical curves (see http://cr.yp.to/ecdh.html)

ENCRYPTION

- Applied Cryptography, Bruce Schneier

- Cryptography Engineering, Ferguson, Schneier, Yohno

FREE EMAIL

- www.mail.com

......and you are off to the races (without Signal or Mark Zuckerberg)! Enjoy!!

[MadocOwain]

Push notifications?

Are the push notifications sent from Meta, or from the local app? More importantly, are those push notifications then sent back to Meta in any way?