Security News > 2021 > November > Facebook Postpones Plans for E2E Encryption in Messenger, Instagram Until 2023

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, disclosed that it doesn't intend to roll out default end-to-end encryption across all its messaging services until 2023, pushing its original plans by at least a year.

"We're taking our time to get this right and we don't plan to finish the global rollout of end-to-end encryption by default across all our messaging services until sometime in 2023," Meta's head of safety, Antigone Davis, said in a post published in The Telegraph over the weekend.

The shift to encryption is a crucial element of Meta's proposals to build a unified privacy-focused communications platform the company announced in March 2019, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg stating that the "Future of communication will increasingly shift to private, encrypted services where people can be confident what they say to each other stays secure and their messages and content won't stick around forever."

It's worth noting that while WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted by default, Facebook Messenger and Instagram are not.

Meta has since extended E2EE for voice and video calls in Messenger earlier this August, along with launching a new opt-in setting as part of a limited test in certain countries that will turn on the feature for Instagram Direct Messages.

"Sadly, at a time when we need to be taking more action... Facebook is still pursuing end-to-end encryption plans that place the good work and the progress that has already been made at jeopardy," U.K. General Secretary Priti Patel said in April.

News URL

https://thehackernews.com/2021/11/facebook-postpones-plans-for-e2e.html