How to enable end-to-end encryption on Facebook Messenger

While protecting your privacy online has been a topic of interest for some time, events in the news – such as the chat history that Facebook recently turned over to the police – have put it in the spotlight. But how do you protect your privacy while staying in touch with friends and family? While there are a number of messaging apps with enhanced privacy features, sometimes you can’t convince the people you want to keep in touch with to use them. What’s your alternative? For example, what if they insist on chatting on Facebook Messenger?

Well, you can start using End-to-End Encryption (E2EE) in Messenger.

Basically, end-to-end encryption means that nobody — not even Facebook’s company Meta — should be able to read what’s in your chat. In short, this is achieved by assigning a special key to each party’s account; Only the account with this key can unlock the message. Currently, Meta has E2EE available on its messenger platform, but only per chat. The company has announced its intention to enable E2EE by default soon, but in the meantime, if you want to start a Messenger conversation that you want to keep private, here’s how to enable it. (The process is generally the same for Android devices and iPhones.)

• Select in your Messenger mobile app chat in the bottom menu.
• Tap the To edit Icon at the top right (it looks like a pen).
• Turn those on lock icon top right.
• Select the name of the person you want to chat with. (Note: According to Meta, there are some accounts that you cannot use with E2EE, such as corporate and socialite accounts.)

If you’re already chatting with the person and decide to enable E2EE, you can do the same.

• In the conversation, tap the information icon (looks like an “i”) in the top-right corner.
• Beat Go to the secret talk.

From here you can also switch to Disappear mode, which will make the conversation disappear when you close the chat.

• On the information page, tap Vanish mode.
• Switch Vanish mode on.

Note that an encrypted conversation can only take place between the people in that conversation – and the devices they’re using. If you start an encrypted conversation on a mobile device, you can’t just switch to another device and continue it – you have to sign in to the Messenger app on the other device and manually add it to the conversation (the other participants will be notified that a new device was added).

Additionally, the Messenger app lets you participate in encrypted web chats in Chrome, Safari, and Firefox (ironically, Firefox must have private mode turned off).