Facebook Messenger users may want to change to a new alternative until next year, as chats sent through the platform are still not end-to-end encrypted. This is the advice given by cybersecurity expert Zack Duffman, who said that using the service in its current state could put messages sent through the platform at risk of being hacked.
You should switch your personal chats and certainly anything sensitive to WhatsApp, or even Signal, Douffman warned all users in an article published on Forbes.
And that sounds pretty dramatic for those who aren't aware, Messenger hasn't yet brought end-to-end encryption to its service as a default option, and without changing the settings, and starting a new conversation, your messages won't be protected from prying eyes, which basically means Anything sent between devices can be intercepted and read by third parties.
It is possible to send an encrypted message via a secret chat in "Messenger" but this is not turned on by default and does not work with group chats.
The company is clearly well aware that it is falling short in this security measure with a recent post on its website saying: We are working hard to provide default end-to-end encryption for all of our messaging services. This will protect people's private messages and mean only the sender and receiver, Not even us, can access their messages, while we expect to make more progress in default end-to-end encryption for Messenger and Instagram Direct messages this year, but it takes a long time, a long-term project and we won't be fully end-to-end encryption until sometime In 2022 at the earliest.
It seems unlikely that Facebook Messenger will get any end-to-end encryption by default until late next year, which is a long time to wait for something many may see as a key feature.
What makes this problem even more apparent is the amount of uproar that WhatsApp has created about the importance of this technology.
And if you're worried that your Messenger conversations should remain private, it might be a good idea to send messages via WhatsApp or remember to press the secret mode feature.