Facebook’s following the encrypted messaging trend set by other apps including Facebook-owned WhatsApp, Viber, and Google’s Allo. On Friday, the social network announced a limited beta version of Messenger for Android and iOS with an end-to-end encryption (E2EE) feature dubbed secret conversations.
Secret conversations will only be available to a limited number of users at first, with a wider roll out planned for later this summer. The feature name “secret conversations” first surfaced in March.
Messenger’s secret conversations won’t be like WhatsApp, which offers complete E2EE for all messages when all users in the conversation have a compatible version of the app.
